SOURCE: "A Literary Offering: Elizabeth Jolley," in LIARS: Australian New Novelists, Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 267-300.

In the following excerpt, Daniel places Jolley among a group of New Australian writers that she describes as "Liars" depicting "a literary tromp l' oeil, in which one level mirrors another: truth and illusions and reality and the Lie of fiction mirror each other. " The critic provides a dialogue that embodies her concept of the lie of fiction as it relates to Jolley's writings. She also compares Jolley's body of work to a fugue with shifting and conflicting voices, stories, and realities.

READER Which way do you think Jolley's mind runs?

LIAR It certainly doesn't run straight. There are no straight lines in Jolley's work. Ellipses, overlaps, intersections, up and down Tangled Hierarchies of levels, criss-crossing. And inside out. It's all in the eye. You blink and what was absurd has...