Not yet the moon

by Eve Langley

A strange book, with a fresh setting- the agricultural sections of Australia, as itinerant pickers move from harvest to harvest. There are parts of it that etch unforgettable pictures. There is a revealing awareness of the conditions that gave rise to social problems. There is a sense of being an intimate part of the scene -- not outside looking in. It is a story, told in the first person, by one of two sisters who-dressed as boys- go with the pickers, and return now and again to their mother at home. But the author- for me at least-throws the whole book out of key by her flowery style, her ramblings away from the point of the story- if there is one. The central character is an unconvincing- and most unprepossessing character, a self-conscious prude, driven by an abnormal sex urge which her subconscious refutes.

377 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1946

About the author

Eve Langley (1 September 1904 – circa 1 June 1974), born Ethel Jane Langley, was an Australian-New Zealand novelist and poet. Her novels belong to a tradition of Australian women's writing that explores the conflict between being an artist and being a woman.

Langley first made a name for herself as a writer in New Zealand in the 1930s where, with Douglas Stewart, Gloria Rawlinson and Robin Hyde, her poetry was regularly published in magazines.[2] McLeod writes that she was "by the late thirties known in New Zealand literary circles as a promising poet". She continued to be published as a poet after her return to Australia, with her poems appearing in magazines like The Bulletin. One of her poems, "Native-born", regularly appears in Australian anthologies. Her journalism and short stories were also published in the 1930s and 1940s, and occasionally in the 1950s.

While Langley wrote consistently throughout her life, she had only two novels published in her lifetime. Ten other novels are held in the Mitchell Library in manuscript form. She wrote actively during her twenties – journals, letters, poems and stories – and some of these writings were used in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Pea-Pickers, which was published in 1942. The Pea-Pickers has been described as "a fanciful, autobiographical, first-person narrative of the adventures of two young women, 'Steve' and 'Blue' who seek excitement, love and 'poetry' in rural Gippsland". Her second novel, White Topee, is a sequel. Langley often referred to herself as 'Steve' in her journals.