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Fiction
by Laurie Clancy
April 1986, no. 79

About Tilly Beamis by Sumner Locke Elliott

Pavanne, 252p., $6. 95 pb

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Expatriate Australian writer and now naturalised American citizen Sumner Locke Elliott seems to have written this novel to dramatise his own sense of cultural displacement and identity. Cutting back and forth in time (between 1978 and 1950) and place (Australia and the United States), it traces the attempt of a woman named Tanya van Zandt in New York to retrace the whereabouts and identity of an Australian, Tilly Beamis, who turns out to be (it does not take the alert reader long to recognise) her actual former self.

 


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About Tilly Beamis by Sumner Locke Elliott

Pavanne, 252p., $6. 95 pb

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.


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