ACT Book of the Year

2004

>>2003

WINNER
Marion Halligan The Point Allen & Unwin

SYNOPSIS

On a promontory in a lake within a city built by the famed architect Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony, rises an elegant glass confection which is home to the best restaurant in the city - The Point. Here, in lamp-lit art deco splendour, comfortable well-heeled patrons like computer engineer Jerome Glancy, come to break bread and feast on the fine food of its chef, Flora, whose 'food is an idea, carefully thought out, before it becomes flesh on a plate'.

In a modern city, the pleasures of gastronomy are neither affordable nor of interest to much of the population and the piece of land on which the Point rests approximates as home for a couple of oddly matched vagrants: ex-lawyer Clovis and a young heroin addict, Gwenyth. When a man is brutally murdered, the paths of the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' cross and what looked like difference suddenly seems strangely more familiar.

The Point is a novel of intricate complexity and wit about our appetites and desires and the way they irrevocably shape the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marion Halligan is an award-winning novelist, essayist and short story writer. Her most recent novel, The Fog Garden was shortlisted for a swag of distinguished literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and her previous novel, The Golden Dress, was shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and the Miles Franklin Award. She has also received the Age Book of the Year, the ACT Book of the Year, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Braille Book of the Year, the 3M Talking Book of the Year and the Geraldine Pascall prize for critical writing. Marion Halligan's previous books are the novels Spider Cup, Lovers' Knots and Wishbone; many books of essays, non-fiction and short stories, including Collected Stories, Eat My Words, Out of the Picture, Cockles of the Heart; a children's book, The Midwife's Daughters; and Those Women who Go to Hotels, co-written with Lucy Frost.

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