by Zoe Morrison
London, June 1st, 2016
Excerpt from BBC News, Radio 4, 8 a.m.
‘The writer Alice Murray died last night at the age of 85. Murray’s unique and controversial novels and essays were all written in the last ten years of her life. Her work dealt with life’s largest and most basic issues: morality, love, faith, happiness, and the role of culture and the economy in shaping human thought and behaviour. Murray is survived by her son, the composer Richard Haywood, her daughter-in-law, Professor Emily Green, and her beloved grand-daughter, Grace Green.’
Acknowledgements
While I was working as a researcher in the field of intimate violence, I interviewed people who had experienced sexual and/or domestic violence, almost all of them women. Their accounts stayed with me; in the end they changed me. I am very grateful for the opportunities I had to speak with them, and for their trust and courage.
I have also drawn on others’ research in this book, including Debra Parkinson, Kerry Burns and Claire Zara’s evocative work A Powerful Journey. Domestic and sexual violence is common, of course, and when talking about my work in this area I ended up speaking to many people about what had happened to them. But all the people in this book are fictional characters and any resemblance to real people is entirely coincidental.
I was lucky to find The Incorporated Wife, co-edited by Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener. Ardener and Lidia Sciama’s chapters were of particular assistance in understanding the life of a college wife in its historical context. Thanks, also, to the many people I interviewed for my own research on social exclusion in Oxford and Britain; and to all those with whom I have worked in this and related fields. (I should note here the liberties I have taken with aspects of the physical and social architecture of Oxford − glorious allowances of a writer of fiction.)
I would like to acknowledge my wonderful piano teachers: Janet Potter, Clemens Leske Snr at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, and Jan Lappin.
There are others who have helped and encouraged me: Tom Carrig, Sophie Cunningham, Anna Funder, Kira Georgakopoulous, Joan Grant, Clare Harding, Matt Hooper, Derek and Sue James, May Lam, Anne Manne, Alice Pung, Lauren Rickards.
Thanks to Nikki Christer at Penguin Random House for her belief, and her brilliance; to Catherine Hill, an editor of outstanding skill and sensitivity (what a pleasure it has been). My agent Clare Forster took this book to a place it would not have gone without her. Thanks also to Amanda O’Connell, Sandy Cull, Linda Funnell and Anyez Lindop.
Great thanks are due to my parents, Cherrie and Bill, whose love of music, books, nature, social justice, each other, and us, is such wonderful germination for a writer. My siblings Catie, Nia and Peter, always in my head and heart, are to be thanked, too. My husband Josh’s support has been bold and unequivocal, and his belief in this essential; I thank him with all my heart. Most of all I would like to acknowledge my daughters, Beatrix and Helena, because I have learnt so much from them about life, and feelings, and what love is.
Zoë Morrison was a research fellow and college lecturer in human geography at Oxford University, where she completed her DPhil as a Rhodes Scholar. Her work in research and advocacy has addressed social exclusion and violence against women. Zoë has an LMusA in piano performance. She lives in Melbourne.
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Version 1.0
Music and Freedom
978 1 92532 421 1
First published by Vintage in 2016
Copyright © Zoë Morrison, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Morrison, Zoë, author
Music and freedom/Zoë Morrison
ISBN 978 1 92532 421 1 (ebook)
Women pianists – Fiction
Psychologically abused women – Fiction
Music, Influence of – Fiction
Man–woman relationships – Fiction
A823.4
Cover design by Design Sandy Cull, gogoGingko
Cover image: ‘Oxford spires’ by Mark Owen, Arcangel
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