Book Details

The Student Chronicles

Alice Garner

'I'm feeling a bit shell-shocked, and I'm tempted to tell Hugues why, but I don't think he would believe me.

Opinion

“The Student Chronicles untimately takes on the shape of its narrator. It is not a meditation on university but on Alice Garner’s experience of university and coming-of-age. And it is for that personal story that the book is best enjoyed.” Sydney Morning Herald

“Alice Garner, a dedicated letter and journal writer, has her own distinctive voice and here she lends it to documenting university life in The Student Chronicles. This book is clear-eyed and free of sentimentality, but her account of intellectual freedom and vigour almost makes you want to take on a HECS debt.” SUnday Telegraph 08/10/06

About this Title

'I'm feeling a bit shell-shocked, and I'm tempted to tell Hugues why, but I don't think he would believe me. In fact I know he wouldn't. A week earlier … I was at the Cannes Film Festival-also known as Hollywood on the Riviera-with three other Australian women (a director, a writer and an actress) and we had managed to talk our way onto Al Pacino's yacht … In Arcachon though, I was known only as a young PhD student from les Antipodes, the land where people walk upside-down …'

The Student Chronicles is Alice Garner's vivid and entertaining memoir of her university years. Opening after a week of parties and press in Cannes for the film Love and Other Catastrophes, Alice looks back on the experiences and events which led her there.

She tells the story of the share-house dramas, the entanglements and the debates which characterised her student years, and candidly describes the challenges of striking out alone.

This is Alice Garner's coming-of-age story—playful, provocative and full of surprising discoveries.

About the Author

Alice Garner tries to make a living as an historian, actor and musician. She splits the rest of her time between looking after her two children, enjoying her husband's fine cooking, and volunteering with Actors for Refugees, which she co-founded in 2001. As an actor, Alice is best known for her role as Carmen in the much-loved ABC-TV series SeaChange, and as Alice in the campus feature film Love and Other Catastrophes (Film Critics' Circle Award; AFI nomination). She has also starred in The Secret Life of Us and her latest work is in Ray Lawrence's feature Jindabyne. Alice has a doctorate in History from the University of Melbourne. This is her second book.

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978-0-522-85278-3