Some Everyday Folk and Dawn — Miles Franklin

Australian writer Miles Franklin -- that's not a man's name, it's a woman's, short for "Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin" -- was an odd and greatly underappreciated writer. If you read of her at the online encyclopedia, you'll learn that "She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award." Well, we'd never heard of it. But we happened into this book, "Some Everyday Folk and Dawn," and we love it. It's not the novel she was famous for, either: that was "My Brilliant Career." Here, listen to the opening passage -- "The summer sun streamed meltingly down on the asphalted siding of the country railway station and occasioned the usual grumbling from the passengers alighting from the afternoon express." "There were only three who effect this narrative -- a huge, red-faced, barrellike figure that might have served to erect as a monument to the overfeeding in vogue in this era; a tall, spare, old fellow with a grizzled beard, who looked as though he had never known a succession of square feeds; and myself, whose physique does not concern this narrative."