Searching for Charmian

by Suzanne Chick

Thirty years ago, Gina Chick’s mother Suzanne wrote a bestselling memoir after discovering that her birth mother was none other than iconic Australian writer Charmian Clift. That book, Searching for Charmian, is now being rereleased for Mothers’ Day 2025 with a new foreword by Gina and an afterword by Suzanne.

When forty-eight-year-old Suzanne Chick discovers the identity of her birth mother, suddenly nothing will satisfy her but knowing everything. Charmian was nineteen when she gave birth to her baby girl and had to give her up for adoption. By the time Suzanne unearthed her birth mother’s name, Charmian was dead, having taken her own life in 1969 at the age of forty-five. By then she was a beloved columnist, novelist and essayist whose name was known to thousands of readers. But for all her talent, intelligence and extraordinary beauty, Charmian's life was marked by deep unhappiness.

As Suzanne learns about the mother she will never meet, she finds herself re-examining the course her own life has taken, gaining insight into the life of the woman who brought her up – her adoptive mother, Marjorie Shaw. More than just a fascinating piece of literary history, this is a moving account of the consequences of adoption and Suzanne's search for identity.

‘My mother’s life changed forever the day she discovered her birth mother was Charmian Clift. In the tsunami of self-discovery that followed this surprising revelation, Mum went on to write her own book, Searching For Charmian, as she turned her life and identity upside down discovering the mother she never knew … Ma, growing up, I never realised what an extraordinary woman you were, because you were just there being amazing in an effortless dance of being yourself. But now I know, and I wonder at my luck, having you as my mother. Every time I look at your face I see a postcard from my future and I’m glad of it. I love that face more than the sun.’  – Gina Chick, bestselling author, inaugural winner of Alone Australia, daughter of Suzanne and granddaughter of Charmian

Kindle Edition

Published April 2, 2025

Reviews

[Laurena · Rating 3 out of 5]

New edition - An interesting read.
Thanks to publisher for ARC

[Jillwilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I somehow missed the publication of this book in 1994. “In 2025, the abiding context for the new edition of Searching for Charmain is celebrity status – something Eliot [reviewer of the ’94 book] expressed reservations about in 1994 – which is now shared with Clift by Gina Chick, Suzanne Chick’s daughter and the author of a new preface. This edition captures a culture’s fascination with two unconventional women in Clift and Gina Chick, two generations apart, pulling them into proximity.” This is a new edition with different content – one reviewer notes: “Suzanne tells of her successful attempt to enter her birth mother’s house, a place she had ‘only seen in photographs’. The original edition of Searching for Charmian turned to photographs to underline Chick’s ties to Clift; this edition is not concerned to persuade readers, or Suzanne herself, of this fact.”

For a whole lot of reasons, I am very interested in the impact of adoption – both on the mother and on the child. I coming to know more about her birth mother, Chick also become more curious about her adopted mother and realises that she now knows more about a mother that she never met than she does about the woman who brought her up. Here Chick writes: “In finding my natural mother, I have set free a self that had always been there, but has never been certain of its provenances. Charmian Clift has given this part of me permission to exist ... What I do with this self will occupy me for the rest of my life. Curiously and quite unexpectedly, I have also found again the mother who adopted me and brought me up. I can love her with new understanding. I have found a kind of peace in unravelling the threads of my being and tracking them back to their general sources: my genes, my upbringing and my own life-choices.”

It could have done with an edit – but I enjoyed reading about both Clift and about her lost daughter. There is an introduction by Gina Chick – the contrast in prose between this and the body of the book is striking; it highlights the welcome plainness of Suzanne Chick’s writing.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading exerpts from this memoir when it was first published THIRTY YEARS AGO, so I’m feeling very old. This is a new edition, includes an introduction by the author’s daughter who won Alone Australia. Now I’m planning to read some Charmian Clift.

[Ita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reserved this book after Gina Chick promoted it during her author talk, I would have bought both Gina's and Suzanne's books then but the books were all sold out that evening!