It must be 30 years since I first read this memoir about a middle-aged woman from Jervis Bay discovering that her birth mother was the famed Australian writer, Charmian Clift.

This third edition has a foreword by the author’s daughter, Gina Chick, herself an author and something of a celebrity after surviving 67 days alone in the Tasmanian wilderness.

That lyrical foreword shows the love for her mother, and the closeness she feels to her wild, talented grandmother after visiting the Greek island on which Charmian had lived with her husband, fellow writer George Johnston, and their three children.

Born on Christmas Day, 1942, Suzanne Chick had been adopted as a baby from Crown Street Women’s Hospital in Sydney, living first in Orange and then Sydney.

It was only when the adoption laws changed in Australia in 1990 that she applied for her original birth certificate … and discovered that Charmian Clift, aged 19, had been her birth mother.

Suzanne Chick embarked on an extraordinary journey to try to find out everything she could about her mother, who had been a writer, essayist and humanist, Australia’s first female newspaper columnist writing weekly for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and who had died by suicide in 1969.

The first edition of this book in 1994 embraced the people who had known her mother, and saw her likeness in Suzanne, as well as suggestions about who might have been her father. This edition includes an afterword by Suzanne, tracing her own journey to the Greek island of Hydra, where her beautiful, talented, sad, mysterious mother had caroused with Leonard Cohen and other creative expats, living a bohemian life.

It’s even better reading, the second time around.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzanne Chick was born in Sydney in 1942 and grew up in Mosman, the same suburb where Charmian Clift and George Johnston settled on their return from Greece in 1964. An adopted child with utterly different talents from those of her new family, Suzanne exhibited an unstoppable creative urge from the earliest age. Educated at North Sydney Girls’ High School, she progressed to the National Art School and Sydney Teachers’ College.

After a long career teaching art and bringing up three daughters, she now makes her living as a painter, with occasional forays into the world of words.

Gina Chick is a barefoot nomad who’s happiest sleeping on the ground next to a fire, muddy paws and all. She’s the daughter and granddaughter of bestselling Australian authors Suzanne Chick and Charmian Clift. Writing is in her genes. She recently won the inaugural season of the survival show Alone Australia (produced by iTV for SBS) after spending 67 days completely solo in the Tasmanian winter wilderness, dancing barefoot in the moss and singing to a platypus; which just goes to show she’s a bit bonkers but also never quits. She gives great hugs.

If you want all her grown-up stuff, check out her website www.ginachick.com.