Sue Woolfe
Paperback 2026
An Australian composer, at the height of her international fame, is besieged by a would-be biographer who demands to know – what’s the source of her joy and how does she channel it into her creativity? She always evades him, but tells us.
This novel was prompted by my discovery after the 2017 Royal Commission into the Institutional Response to Sexual Abuse that my mother, not an orphan, had been abandoned in one of the most abusive orphanages of the early 20th century. She kept it a secret all her life, too ashamed to tell anyone.
I wrote the novel wishing to alert others to older relatives who may be similarly traumatised, and behaving erratically and puzzlingly, doggedly hiding an agonising grief within.
This is my seventh book and is published by a one-woman publishing house, Fair Play Publishing.
I’m the author of the best-selling, internationally published, much-awarded Leaning Towards Infinity, as well as Painted Woman, The Secret Cure, The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady (about creativity and neuroscience), The Oldest Song in the World, Do You Love me or What? (a book of short stories).
I teach everywhere (to spread the word) the neuroscience of creativity – what science knows about how to be more creative.
Praise: I didn’t want to stop reading this unique and wonderful book, and afterwards, my heart was ragged. Sue Woolfe says things that, to me, have not been said before. – critic Helen Elliott
ISBN 9781923236486