Grand Days, Frank Moorhouse, Random House , 2011, 1742752683, 9781742752686, . Meet Edith Campbell Berry, the woman all Australian women would like to be. On a train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood in the dining car, makes his acquaintance over a lunch of six courses, and allows him to kiss her passionately.Their early intimacy binds them together once they reach Geneva and their posts at the newly created League of Nations. There, a heady idealism prevails over Edith and her young colleagues, and nothing seems beyond their grasp, certainly not world peace. The exuberance of the times carries over into Geneva nights: Edith is drawn into a dark and glamorous underworld where, coaxed by Ambrose, she becomes more and more sexually adventurous. Reading Grand Days is a rare experience: it is vivid and wise, full of shocks of recognition and revelation. The final effect of the book is intoxicating and unplaceably original..

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On a train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood in the dining car, and allows him to kiss her passionately. Their early intimac...more A contemporary romantic Australian masterpiece, Grand Days tells of the moral and sexual awakening of an idealistic young Australian woman working in the diplomatic corps in Europe in the aftermath of World War I.

On a train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood in the dining car, and allows him to kiss her passionately. Their early intimacy binds them together once they reach Geneva and their posts at the newly created League of Nations. There, a heady idealism prevails over Edith and her young colleagues, and nothing seems beyond their grasp, certainly not world peace. The exuberance of the times carries over into Geneva nights: Edith is drawn into a glamorous and dangerous underworld where, coaxed by Ambrose, she becomes more and more sexually adventurous.

'Edith Campbell Berry is one of the most winning women in contemporary fiction...There is colour galore - a risque interlude in Paris, a Geneva riot, friendships made and broken, moments of real pathos and terror. The book would make an extraordinarily glamorous movie, and most actresses would brawl to play sexy, smart, plucky Edith.'

I think it is actually worth 3 1/2 stars. The history of the League of Nations is fascinating, however, Moorhouse is a wonderful writer but I do think he was far too long-winded at times (a la Rushdie), especially with his vast descriptions of Edith's rules for living. I think it was because of his verbosity that I have probably unfairly judged Edith at pompous,rigid and "holier than thou" despite the sexuality. I also think Moorhouse would like his readers to see Edith as an adventurous, indepe...more I think it is actually worth 3 1/2 stars. The history of the League of Nations is fascinating, however, Moorhouse is a wonderful writer but I do think he was far too long-winded at times (a la Rushdie), especially with his vast descriptions of Edith's rules for living. I think it was because of his verbosity that I have probably unfairly judged Edith at pompous,rigid and "holier than thou" despite the sexuality. I also think Moorhouse would like his readers to see Edith as an adventurous, independent woman far before her time and, thank God, that was starting to come through by end of the book. I did enjoy Grand Days and am looking to reading the next one in the trilogy. I am expecting Edith and Robert to call their firstborn girl, Germaine!(less)

I wanted to read this book because it is a favourite of the political journalist Annabel Crab and I am a fan of her so even though this is an historical fiction novel I decided to give it a go. It was fantastic and just like Annabel Crab I too would like to be tha main protagonist, Edith Campbell Berry. I loved the fact that this was an historical novel that had some historical 'facts' at the end and a list of the characters and who was REAL and who was imaginary. Well done Frank Moorhouse! When...more I wanted to read this book because it is a favourite of the political journalist Annabel Crab and I am a fan of her so even though this is an historical fiction novel I decided to give it a go. It was fantastic and just like Annabel Crab I too would like to be tha main protagonist, Edith Campbell Berry. I loved the fact that this was an historical novel that had some historical 'facts' at the end and a list of the characters and who was REAL and who was imaginary. Well done Frank Moorhouse! Whenever I read any novel I am always aware of the author behind the story, maybe because I am an artist and realise how much of myself is in everything I create, and I was often aware of Moorhouse but not in a distracting way, more like we were both voyeurs. There were only one or two times that I thought Edith acted in a way that I think would not be how generally women would act but just because I am a woman I don't think I would really know any more than Moorhouse would in this regard. ( I am already starting to overanalyse the way Edith would!)

Uggh. This book dragged. I should have given up on it each time I thought I should, but I kept reading in the hopes it may get better. It didn't. By the end the only character I even sort of liked had been sacrificed and there was nothing left to hold my interest. I finished the book, only to say I had. I will definitely not be searching out the remaining books in the trilogy.

Overall, it was too long, too wandering, too vague, and had much too much sex. I had hoped there would be more on the background of the League of Nations, a subject about which I know very little (I've found that in history, if the US wasn't involved, it really gets glossed over in schools and history textbooks), but in the end it was just a whiney idealist woman coming up against a world that does not share her ideals. And in the end, like most idealist people, she had to compromise her ideals.

This is a really wonderful book. There's a clarity and precision to the prose which I haven't seen in any other Australian novel. Too often Australian writers aim for the vernacular and use a style that tries to imitate speech. Moorhouse, on the other hand, seems to acknowledge that written fiction has its own discourse and trusts that an Australian style will emerge without having to reach for it. Consequently we get a lucid description of events and a wonderful insight into the mind of the pro...more This is a really wonderful book. There's a clarity and precision to the prose which I haven't seen in any other Australian novel. Too often Australian writers aim for the vernacular and use a style that tries to imitate speech. Moorhouse, on the other hand, seems to acknowledge that written fiction has its own discourse and trusts that an Australian style will emerge without having to reach for it. Consequently we get a lucid description of events and a wonderful insight into the mind of the protagonist, Edith Campbell Berry.

Edith starts a job with the League of Nations and the story follows her adventures from there. This setting provides a great opportunity for reflection on big questions such as idealism vs. pragmatism, war vs. peace and other less grandiose questions which it's hard to discuss without spoiling the story. The greatest spoiler of all, of course, is that history tells us that the League of Nations was a failure and that World War II broke out not long after the events in the novel. A quick read of the wikipedia entry on the League of Nations will provide helpful background if you didn't study modern history at high school, as many of the events and characters in the story are based on real life. This history also lends a tragic poignancy to the attempts of Edith and her colleagues to put an end to war.

I love the character of Edith Campbell-Berry and Frank Moorhouse's writing. He writes characters not so much plots. It seems to me that the plot is there to support the characters. It also covers a part of history (The League of Nations era) that I had not read about previously. This is a long book at about just under pages and I could understand some readers finding it slow going. However, if you like great writing and strong characters this is a gem.

Enjoyed this - but definitely a 'holiday' read with 700 pages. I loved learning about the League of Nations, the politics of it all and buracracy the same as anywhere. Edith is delightful - especially the opening chapter where she has her personal rules of conversation and etiquette which she designed for herself in her passage to Europe via ship. Interesting as an Australian University educated woman in that era - and the social scene (although quite spiced up by Moorhouse). I keep imagining he...more Enjoyed this - but definitely a 'holiday' read with 700 pages. I loved learning about the League of Nations, the politics of it all and buracracy the same as anywhere. Edith is delightful - especially the opening chapter where she has her personal rules of conversation and etiquette which she designed for herself in her passage to Europe via ship. Interesting as an Australian University educated woman in that era - and the social scene (although quite spiced up by Moorhouse). I keep imagining her as physically and wittingly resembling the Phryne Fisher character in the current Australian TV series of Miss Fisher's murder mysteries.

A delightful surprise. Moorhouse has created a great character and evoked the spririt of the era with panache. Both Edith's strengths and faults invite the reader to consider their own development of the self. I'm sorry I didn't read this when it was first published. Will definitely read the other books in the series. I seem to have fallen into an era with my reading of late. This is the fourth book this year dealing with the period 'between the wars' and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Interesting and thought provoking - this first book in the Edith Trilogy, follows Edith, a young Australian, to her first posting with the League of Nations in Geneva. I haven't read any Moorhouse and found his style very interesting - mainly character based (rather than plot driven) and he manages to capture the feel of the 1920's very well. a great one to get your teeth into over the christmas break!

This is an interesting and intriguing book - I didn't know anything about the era to the League beyond a few key dates learnt in Modern History - Edith Berry is an endearing protagonist - it's a coming of age story for both her and the rapidly changing world. Loved the parallels between her public and personal worlds. Looking forward to reading the next in the series.

The exuberance of the times carries over into Geneva nights: Edith is drawn into a dark and glamorous underworld where, coaxed by Ambrose, she becomes more and more sexually adventurous. Reading Grand Days is a rare experience: it is vivid and wise, full of shocks of recognition and revelation. The final effect of the book is intoxicating and unplaceably original.

"This is the first of Moorhouse's three rich and complex books about a young Australian woman who sets off for Geneva in the 1920s to begin a diplomatic career with the newly formed League of Nations. Edith Campbell Berry is my favourite fictional character ever: sophisticated but frequently gauche, intelligent but naive, this is her getting of personal and political wisdom." - Liz Byrski, The Sunday Age

Frank Moorhouse was born in the coastal town of Nowra, NSW. He worked as an editor of small-town newspapers and as an administrator and in the 1970s became a full-time writer. He has written fiction, non fiction, screenplays and essays and edited many collections of writing. Forty Seventeen was given a laudatory full-page review by Angela Carter in the New York Times and was named Book of the Year by the Age and 'moral winner' of the Booker Prize by the London magazine Blitz. Grand Days, the first novel in The Edith Trilogy, won the SA Premier's Award for Fiction. won the Miles Franklin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Age Book of the Year Award. Frank has undertaken numerous fellowships and his work has been translated into several languages. He was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to literature in 1985 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from in 1997.

Moorhouse is a major figure in his native Australia but little known here. The quality of this novel (apparently the first in what is to be a series about the early days of the League of Nations), however, and the reviews it has received in Australia and England, suggest he will not be an unknown much longer. For Grand Days , after a rather arch beginning, turns into a vastly beguiling character study set against a fascinating and little-known background. Edith Campbell Berry, the adventurous daughter of a freethinking Australian family who comes to the fledgling League of Nations in Geneva in the early 1920s as a young official, is one of the most winning women in contemporary fiction. Determined to live a moral life and do good works, but endlessly experimental in matters of the heart and the flesh, she becomes involved with an older man--a British officer at the League who leads an androgynous transvestite life that at once attracts and faintly repels her. When she discovers he is acting as a double agent for the British Foreign Office she betrays him and he falls into a rapid decline. Meanwhile, a dashing but hard-nosed reporter has been paying her cynical court while her career advances. Throughout it all, Edith worries endlessly--about the League and the issues it addresses and fails to address, about birth control on both a world and personal level, and even about the health of her bowels. Moorhouse never patronizes Edith and, by his close examination of her every thought and emotion, he brings a reader close to the soul of a delightfully unpredictable, usually admirable person. There is color galore--a risque interlude in Paris, a Geneva riot, political infighting, friendships made and broken, moments of real pathos and terror. The book would make an extraordinarily glamorous movie, and most actresses would brawl to play sexy, smart, plucky Edith.

This is the story of Edith, an idealistic young Australian woman who sees in the international vision of the League of Nations the prospect of a truly peaceable world. Desperately wanting to be a part of this vision, she accepts a job with the league Secretariat in Geneva. Despite self-doubt, she is determined to make her opinions heard and to contribute to the work of the League as it struggles to meet its goals. Recognizing her own provincialism, she deliberately sets out to expand her horizons, easily accepting her colleague/lover's transvestite tendencies (which she sees as being very "Weimar") and engaging in a brief fellatory encounter with a black jazz musician in Paris. Even if Edith's rationalist thought processes sometimes get in the way of the story, Moorhouse successfully captures the ambience of time and place as well as the nature of bureaucracy and the subtleties of diplomatic endeavor. His heroine's earnestness, combined with our knowledge of the league's ultimate failure, lends the work a sense of poignancy. A historical romance best suited to public libraries.

This novel is about Edith Campbell Berry, a bright young lady who joins the League of Nations and sets about to reform the world. She has a strong, but undisciplined intellect, able to view her mundane tasks, such as seeing that delegates get a pencil holder at a conference, as matters of world shaking importance. She is even able to intellectualize the act of defecation. Thinking herself a modern woman, she engages in lots of kinky sex. In all of this, the author manages to recreate the intellectual passions of the age. Indeed, Edith's superiors do not seem to be any more effective than she is. And then, somewhere along the way, Edith is no longer the innocent Candide, but becomes something much more sinister, destroying a lover without giving him a chance to explain himself and developing a passion for eugenics to reduce the numbers of the "lower classes" (interestingly, she shows no concern with the huge election gains of the Nazi Party in Germany at this time). Yet there is no abrupt transition: Edith, like many 20th Century intellectuals, has developed along logical lines unhampered by morality, a route which leads to tyranny. If you want keen insight into how civilized countries developed death camps and gulags and how leading intellectuals supported them every step of the way, read this book. That the author avoids having his message overwhelm the generally comic tone is a tribute to his skill. This book is a classic. It even has appendices in the back to provide the reader with information ranging from the constitution of the League of Nations to a summary of many of the intellectual developments of the 1920s.

Grand Days is a entertaining and insightful book which is in equal parts a coming of age story, a political thriller and a how-to guide for bureaucrats. The book tells the story of the grandly named Edith Campbell Berry, who arrives in Geneva in the mid 1920s as an impractical idealist and ends up as a somewhat jaded, but still idealistic, international bureaucrat.

Moorhouse is very successful in drawing out Berry's transitions and changing views of the world and despite its length the book is a very easy and entertaining read. I did feel, however, that the last third of the book gets bogged down a little as Berry struggles to reconcile her changing ideology with her relationships. All up, Grand Days is a very worthwhile novel and manages to be both entertaining and educational.

Moorhouse, better known as a writer of experimental fiction in Australia, takes a stab at historical fiction with brilliant results. The basic story--the education of a young Australian woman at the League of Nations in Geneva in the 1920s--barely hints at all the strange, insightful, and moving places the novel goes. This is a story about idealism and corruption--both personal and on the world stage--that it unlike anything else you've read. It's long and it's very very smart--still the fact that it's not better known and aclaimed is very puzzling.

Frank Moorhouse provides a satisfying account of the heady days of the League of Nations when hopes were high for world peace and WW2 unseen on the horizon. The young heroine, Edith, has much to learn about protocol, rules and diplomacy but soon makes her mark within the League. She also has much to learn about people and relationships, including the seedy side of life in Geneva.

Moorhouse is not afraid to give us intimate details of Edith's sexual education. At times she seems quite brash which also carries over into her working life. She manages to lead quite a charmed life without much thought of the consequences of some of the very unconventional decisions she makes at work. Some attitudes now seem dated; for example Edith is in favour of human eugenics.

Having heard Frank Moorehouse talk about the Edith trilogy at the Southern Highlands NSW Writers's Festival I was really keen to start reading. Edith as a personality is apparently largely based on his mother & on another woman living in the USA who worked at the League of Nations. This book is a great way to lead in to this important time in history and even more interesting with a female as the main character. Edith manages to be worldly and unworldly at the same time. She is way ahead of her time in terms of some of her sexual exploits and remarkably innocent as well. Can't wait to kindle the second and third books for reading on the plane when I head off on holiday.

Frank Moorhouse AM (born 21 December 1938 in Nowra, New South Wales) is an Australian writer. He has won major Australian national prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing. His work has been published in the United Kingdom, France and the United States and also translated into German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Serbian, and Swedish. http://edufb.net/34.pdf http://edufb.net/441.pdf http://edufb.net/763.pdf