Honour's Mimic
We are alike, Kathy thought. You are a desperate one, too. She was incredulous that she could be so happy when it was so perfectly clear that the situation was impossible, could not possibly last, and that in any case this man was doomed already.
In this novel, Charmian Clift broke the rules of the romance genre by her representation of a relationship between a middle class Australian woman and a Greek sponge diver who is an outcast even within his own society. Both are 'desperate’ – trapped in loveless marriages and overcome by a sense of nameless dread. But when these twin souls fall in love in the ruins of an ancient citadel above the port-town of a remote and poverty-stricken Greek island, ‘honour’ becomes 'mimic' – a false imitation of itself – and is cast aside, together with unhappiness and fear.
Honour’s Mimic combines the authentic Greek setting of Charmian Clift’s travel memoirs with the fine writing that has caused her to be described as Australia’s greatest essayist.
'Charmian Clift broke the rules of the romance genre with this representation of a relationship between a middle-class Australian woman and a Greek sponge diver who is an outcast even within his own society.' – Readings Monthly
'The [writing] is but it is distinctive in its potency, and for the way the love story is interwoven with the brutal realities of class, immigration, and mid-century morality. We devoured it.' – The Paris End
'Honour's Mimic is a superbly realised portrait of the links between true love and mortality. It is about how being in another country can unmoor and perhaps free you to find "a passionate affirmation of that old lost desire to face challenge and danger, to be brave, to dare for the truth".' – Declan Fry
'At the heart of Honour’s Mimic is a transgressive, all-consuming love story that also offers an incisive, often chilling, indictment of the measures and strictures of class and society.' – Heidi Maier, INDaily
'With the compelling flavour of a grotesque and shimmering fairytale that carries no consoling ending, Honour’s Mimic casts a potent spell.' – Carmel Bird, The Saturday Paper
Charmian Clift was born in the coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, on 31 August 1923. After serving as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, she joined the staff of the Melbourne Argus newspaper, and in 1947 married fellow journalist George Johnston. The next year, the couple’s collaborative novel High Valley won the Sydney Morning Herald prize. Fleeing the political claustrophobia of Australia under the Menzies government, in 1952 Charmian and George headed to London. Two years later, they escaped even further, to the Greek islands, where over the next decade they raised three children and created a legend. During this period, Clift wrote the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, and her two novels, Honour’s Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens. After the family returned to Australia in 1964, Charmian Clift began writing a weekly column that appeared in the Melbourne Herald and the Sydney Morning Herald. Charmian Clift died in 1969.
Nadia Wheatley is the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift and The End of the Morning: The never-before-published novel by Charmian Clift. She is also the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as ‘one of the greatest Australian biographies’, this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer. Nadia Wheatley’s other works include the award-winning memoir Her Mother’s Daughter and Radicals – Remembering the Sixties, written in partnership with Meredith Burgmann.
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