The Newspaper of Claremont Street

The Australian author (The Well) imprints the heroine of her new novel indelibly upon the reader's imagination. To the people whose houses she cleans, Margarite Morris is ""Newspaper'' or ``Weekly.'' She tells everyone about all the events in the neighborhood but nothing about herself. Through the author's artistry, however, Weekly's private life becomes real and immediate as she reviews her deprived childhood, mourns for her selfish brother, a small-time crook beloved and spoiled by Weekly and her widowed mother, long dead. Working steadily now in her later years, she accumulates a pile of earnings like a miser, the foundation of her dream to escape into blessed solitude, out of the city into the country. When she finally has enough money, Weekly buys some acreage with a small cabin, her own home at last, but the idyll is threatened by an interloper. What happens then is a stunning resolution to the sad, sometimes wildly funny, altogether wonderful story. (December)