This vivid, intimate, narrative memoir celebrates the life of best-selling and award-winning novelist Kate Grenville's mother. Now a gorgeous paperback

'Clear, authentic and utterly engaging . . . it is as successful as it is authentic' Independent on Sunday

Born to an unhappy marriage and into a deeply sexist society, Nance Russell worked hard for everything she had, and while the world changed around her, she went on to university, to opening businesses and raising a family. One Life is Nance's story - and many other women's too - beautifully captured by her daughter, the bestselling novelist Kate Grenville. Kate draws on the tales passed down to her to create an evocative portrait of life in twentieth-century rural Australia, and a deeply intimate and caring homage to a mother.

"Wonderful" - * Independent *

"A work of imaginative sympathy, it is as successful as it is audacious . . . Clear, authentic and utterly engaging . . . A microcosm for the changes taking place on the world stage in the period spanned" - * Independent on Sunday *

"Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers . . . her great skill as a writer is to take the barest of biographical details and spin them into something of intricate moral complexity" - * Telegraph *

"A compelling read . . . very moving . . . Grenville's feminist instincts, which run quietly through her life and writing, built on her mother's example" - * Sydney Morning Herald *

"Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . She writes with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery" - * Guardian *

"Grenville has emerged not only as the truth-teller but also something of a hero . . . her novels are important quests that go beyond art" - * Irish Times *

"Kate Grenville has a reputation for elegant prose that cuts to the very heart of her subject matter with breathtaking precision" - * Vogue *

"We are given the portrait of a woman whole. I adored her and the way Grenville wrote about her from every angle" - * Savidge Reads *