Complete Knowledge of Sally Fry

by Sylvia Murphy

What is to be done when your thesis is long overdue, your son has run away from home and even retreating to a remote holiday cottage in Cornwall with a mother adept at absorbing (or is it attracting) problems has not brought the required peace and quiet? For Sally Fry, the harassed heroine of this unusual first novel, the answer is to write her Complete Knowledge: bits and pieces of random, though strictly alphabetical, information which, she hopes, will make sense of her haphazard life. But the personal dictionary, far from clearing her mind for more serious work, increasingly comes to reflect the hilarious and often outrageous events which overtake her through a very eventful summer indeed.

Paperback

First published September 1, 1983

About the author

Sylvia Murphy was born in Palestine in 1937, to British parents. In 1939 the family returned to England, where Sylvia grew up and attended school during the WW II years. She was interested in writing from an early age, and continues to write fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Reviews

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sally Fry, single mother, behavioural therapist and college lecturer, is working on her PhD thesis. Hoping for a few quiet months of seclusion in her mother's rented Cornwall cottage, her plans go quickly awry. Her troubled teenage son Sebastian disappears, leaving behind a cryptic note; a sister's sudden operation means the arrival of Sally's rather sweet though boisterous young niece and nephew; another sister shows up on the cottage doorstep on the run from the implosion of her marriage with a Swedish filmmaker, who himself appears shortly thereafter and proceeds to spend his time alternately spying on the household through field glasses and enjoying the generous favours of Sally's mother's neighbour's wife.

The thesis does not progress. What does get done is Sally's own quirky autobiography, written in passages triggered by alphabetical dictionary-style entries; a form of therapeutic self-expression Sally herself developed and then had scooped by her lover-at-the-time to further his own career. Oh yes, Sally has a back story, and more than a bit of baggage!

I Googled Sylvia Murphy this morning, and found that there is a nice little collection of subsequent titles which I shall be searching down, though most appear to be out of print. After enjoying Sally Fry I have high hopes for Sylvia Murphy; I look forward to spending some more time in her literary company.

Sylvia Murphy. Here she is: http://www.sylviamurphy.co.uk/