Nancy Phelan’s Writing Round the Edges is a stylish and beautifully written memoir by one of Australia’s best-known and most prolific writers. Besides previous autobiographical works, Phelan has published four novels, a number of travel books, biographies of Charles Mackerras and Louise Mack (her aunt), as well as, collaboratively, books on yoga and Russian cooking. Winner of the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award in 1988, she has also been shortlisted for a number of national prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award.

This memoir is selective in that its three sections – ‘Seafaring Days’, ‘With the Tide’ and ‘The Gatehouse’ – move in and out of the time continuum, omitting blocks of experience such as Phelan’s life in England during World War II and her work for the South Pacific Commission. These were covered in earlier writings. Passages crammed with anecdotes are interspersed with whole chapters devoted to particular people such as Jill Neville and Dorothy Hewett (to whom the book is dedicated), and the narratives often overlap. There is a moving chapter on the Russian funeral of her friend Paul and a number of lyrical chapters on the changing aspects of deeply loved places: Sydney Harbour and the Blue Mountains. For me, the elegant descriptions of Australian scenery, and especially its birdlife, are highlights of the book.