Classics with a Message

Jolley, Elizabeth. Cabin Fever. Scoresby, VIC.: Penguin, 2011,

Vera White is sitting on the 24^th floor of a hotel in New York waiting to present a paper to a conference on the “Perspectives of Moral Insanity”. Vera is a psychiatric nurse and appears to be suffering from some of the conditions being presented to the conference. Her mind flashes back to various significant events in her life. She remembers her parents, her friends at her first hospital, her first lover, and people she worked with while trying to raise her daughter. Her jobs included assisting in a home for new mothers, working in a boarding school and then working as a live-in housekeeper for a 58 year old professor. One comes to admire Vera’s courage, determination , naivety and humour.

The skill of the author in telling the story in fragments of recollection allows the reader to enhance the experience with their own speculation and recollection.  This book won the “Australian Literature Society Gold Medal”