The Impersonators

Jack Cornock's medical condition, of which his obstinate silence is supposedly a symptom, manages to fan speculation within the families of his two marriages on the revised terms of his last will. After twenty years in Rome, Jack's only kindred daughter, Sylvia, is making what she intends to be her last visit to her native Sydney; and although she is unaware of her father's physical decline she is thought to have mercenary motives. Because of her aspirations on behalf of country and kin, Sylvia is reluctantly caught up in these thickening skeins of estrangement and the inevitable revival of an earlier, foiled liaison. Her repressed discontentmens bursting at the seams, she strikes out at the discontinuity and parochialisms of her country in a compelling blend of sympathy, pathos and expatriate objectivity. 'The Impersonators' is a freshly crafted and supremely modern award-winning novel (Miles Franklin Award, 1980; New South Wales Premier's Literary Award, 1981; Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, 1981), detailing with humour and outstanding perception the fracturing of family relationships and the endurance of love in an increasingly materialistic age. --- Jessica Margaret Queale Anderson was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She died in Sydney aged 93 on 9 July 2010.