Gracious Living

by Andrea Goldsmith

Gracious Living plunges into the excesses of the 1980s.

Adrian Dadswell, an entrepreneur, is the owner of a holiday resort that boasts everything from an indoor golf range to a fake rain forest. Adrian has a former wife and a disabled daughter who, together with their friends, live very differently from Adrian and his white-shoe brigade. It is these women - young and old, married and single, lesbians and mothers - who come to dominate the novel. The book explores the value of diversity, while at the same time presenting a harshly witty examination of materialism.

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 1990

About the author

Andrea Goldsmith is an Australian novelist. She started learning the piano as a young child, and music remains an abiding passion. She initially trained as a speech pathologist and worked for several years with children suffering from severe communication impairment until becoming a full-time writer in the late 1980s. During the 1990s she taught creative writing at Deakin University, and she continues to conduct workshops and mentor new novelists.