The House of Balthus

Shortlisted, National Book Council 'Banjo' Award 1996 Shortlisted, Fantasy Division and Horror Division, Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction 1995 'Mme Lecault met Mme Berry after twenty-seven nights of insomnia. They would have killed anyone else. Now, in retrospect, it seems to her as if she was called - dragged slowly towards Mme Berry over all the immeasurable dark acres of wakefulness...' The House Of Balthus is a magical novel which has the intensity of a dream. Characters from the artist Balthus' paintings walk out of the canvas and take on lives of their own, sharing the spaces of an ancient chateau, now turned aprtment block, in a large French provincial town. The concierge, Mme Lecault, watches closely her tenants, among them the Countess, the Professor, the Painter, Therese and her young lover Michael - but knows only the surface of their lives. She spends her sleepless nights talking to Mme Berry who lives, it would appear, in another century. There is the sound of sobbing, which echoes between rooms and across years there is desire stretched so taut the page seems to vibrate with it, and the pain of