My First Love & Turning Points

There is no emotion quite so intense as that of first love!

When twelve leading Australian writers respond to the subject ‘my first love’ they do so with the warmth of memory and the power of words.

Elizabeth Jolley writes of her love of walking — ‘a walk becomes a meditation on human wishes; Drusilla Modjeska, of an obsessive adolescent love which provided a ‘dramatic shift in focus’ and Brian Matthews recalls his first love as ‘a pompous red rooster or possibly an old 1928 Chev. ute.

A further twelve writers reveal ‘turning points’ – experiences which changed or brought new meaning to their lives. Seamus Heaney recognised the colonial syndrome of “linguistic put down’; Marion Halligan is fascinated by the whole notion of chance and choice’ in our lives and Morris West realised ‘he had a talent to move people’.

The writers capture the many moods of crucial episodes of their past. The result is witty, sad, powerful and affecting.

My First Love and Turning Points were originally commissioned by the editor of Saturday Extra, Graham Reilly, and published as a fortnightly series in The Age. They appear here together for the first time, accompanied by illustrations of the author or their subject.