num_pages: 336
description: Knowing what you want is hard. Accepting what is possible is harder still.It is the mid-1980s. In Australia stay-at-home wives jostle with want-it-all feminists while AIDS threatens the sexual freedom of everyone. On the other side of the world the Soviet bloc is in turmoil.Mikhail Gorbachev has been in power for a year when twenty-four-year-old book illustrator Galina Kogan leaves Leningrad  forbidden ever to return. As a Jew shes inherited several generations worth of Russias chronic anti-Semitism. As a Soviet citizen she is unprepared for Australia and its easy-going ways.Once settled in Melbourne Galina is befriended by Sylvie and Leonard Morrow and their adult son Andrew. The Morrow marriage of thirty years balances on secrets. Leonard is a man with conflicted desires and passions while Sylvie chafes against the confines of domestic life. Their son Andrew a successful mosaicist is a deeply shy man. He is content with his life and work  until he finds himself increasingly drawn to Galina.While Galina grapples with the tumultuous demands that come with being an immigrant in Australia her presence disrupts the lives of each of the Morrows. No one is left unchanged.Invented Lives tells a story of exile: exile from country exile at home and exile from ones true self.It is also a story about love.
language: English
title: Invented Lives
publisher: Scribe Publications