Marion May Campbell – Memoir launch – Thurs 29 Nov
Congratulations to staff member Marion May Campbell! The Man on the Mantelpiece (UWAP), Marion’s experimental memoir about the queer fallout of her father’s death, will be launched on Thursday 29 November.
The book will be launched by our colleague Daniel Marshall, Senior Lecturer in Literature and Course Convenor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Deakin. All welcome, but please RSVP.
When: 6.30pm, Thursday 29 November 2018
Where: Hare Hole, Hares & Hyenas Bookshop, 63 Johnston Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne
RSVP: Hares & Hyenas on (03) 9495 6589 or rsvp[at]hares-hyenas.com.au
The Man on the Mantelpiece
During a 1952 electric storm off Wattamolla, NSW, a waterspout drew in the CSIRO Cloud Physics Dakota aircraft, atomising all those aboard, including the writer’s father. Or did it? When his living body has disappeared, what to make of the uniformed man on the mantelpiece?
Just as the waterspout gathers up living creatures and broken things to transport them elsewhere, this memoir dreams its way into the fragments of his life, along with the queer fall-out in its wake.
When her grief-stricken mother deifies the disappeared, the daughter strives to become him. Sometimes it seems that fateful scenarios, including Cold War conspiracies and ill-conceived scientific projects, converge on the man on the mantelpiece; but at times of grace he steps down joyfully to resume the dance with the living.