The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt

Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Tracy Farr’s acclaimed debut novel is the fictional memoir of Dame Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, junkie.

'Compelling reading' The Listener 

I hold one regret from that day: that I put my first love, my cello, aside. But it was to take up a bigger love, a greater thing; it was to step into the future. Music's Most Modern Instrument. And I was to become Music's Most Modern Musician.

Tracy Farr's debut novel is the fictional memoir of Dame Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, junkie. Documentary filmmaker Mo Patterson approaches veteran musician Lena Gaunt after watching her play at a festival in Perth: her first performance in 20 years.

While initially suspicious of Mo's intentions and reluctant to have her privacy invaded, Lena finds herself sharing stories from her past.

From a solitary childhood in Malacca and a Perth boarding school, to a glittering career in Jazz-age Sydney, to quiet domesticity in a New-Zealand backwater, Lena's is a life characterized by the pull of the sea, the ebb and flow of passion and loss, and her enduring relationship with that extraordinary instrument, the theremin.