Ellen Guppy is the reluctant heroine of Ethel Wilson’s final novel, Love and Salt Water. Saddened by a painful childhood, Ellen has adopted a skeptical independence and learned too well to hold her heart in reserve. But, as the novel unfolds, Ellen undergoes something of a sea-change; learning to accept love along with the sorrow that is rarely far from love.
First published in 1956, Love and Salt Water is a mature and, at times, disturbing synthesis of Ethel Wilson’s major themes: the independence of human lives, the strange alchemy of chance, and the healing illumination of love.
Ethel Davis Wilson, born in South Africa, was taken to live with her maternal grandmother in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1898. In the 1930s Wilson published a few short stories and began a series of fictionalized family reminiscences which were later published as The Innocent Traveller in 1949. Her first published novel, Hetty Dorval, appeared in 1947, and was followed by Swamp Angel in 1954, generally thought of as her most accomplished work. Her final book was Mrs Golightly and Other Stories (1961). The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize is named in her honour.
View titles by Ethel Wilson
Ellen Guppy is the reluctant heroine of Ethel Wilson’s final novel, Love and Salt Water. Saddened by a painful childhood, Ellen has adopted a skeptical independence and learned too well to hold her heart in reserve. But, as the novel unfolds, Ellen undergoes something of a sea-change; learning to accept love along with the sorrow that is rarely far from love.
First published in 1956, Love and Salt Water is a mature and, at times, disturbing synthesis of Ethel Wilson’s major themes: the independence of human lives, the strange alchemy of chance, and the healing illumination of love.
Author
Ethel Davis Wilson, born in South Africa, was taken to live with her maternal grandmother in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1898. In the 1930s Wilson published a few short stories and began a series of fictionalized family reminiscences which were later published as The Innocent Traveller in 1949. Her first published novel, Hetty Dorval, appeared in 1947, and was followed by Swamp Angel in 1954, generally thought of as her most accomplished work. Her final book was Mrs Golightly and Other Stories (1961). The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize is named in her honour.
View titles by Ethel Wilson
