The Seal Woman

Portrait of a widow in mourning by one of Australia’s most important women writers

The Seal Woman was first published to acclaim in 1992 but has been out of print for many years. The novel explores the mind of a middle-aged Danish woman mourning the recent death of her husband at sea, in a cottage lent to her by friends in the seaside village in Victoria where she had spent her honeymoon. Farmer’s prose is marked by the suppleness of its language, and its extraordinary attention to detail. Dagmar’s observations – of the sea and its creatures, the light, the mist, the wind, the life of plants – are so intense and evocative, it is as if she has dissolved into her surroundings. On the other hand, her passivity leaves her vulnerable to the deceit of others, particularly the man she depends on as her lover. Her retreat into wonder is undercut by a persistent questioning, as to how far it might lead her into a state of submission.

The Seal Woman was originally published two years after A Body of Water, an imaginative montage of journal, commonplace book, stories and poems, which it resembles in its own use of mixed sources, from myth and legend and history. In bringing these two books back into print, alongside Farmer’s first work of fiction Alone, and her last books The Bone House and This Water, Giramondo is building on its commitment, not only to this remarkable author, but to the republication of contemporary classics by Australian women authors.