JOHNSON, Susan (Ruth) 1956-

PERSONAL: Born December 30, 1956, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; daughter of John Joseph Alister (in business) and Barbara Ruth (a homemaker; maiden name, Bell) Johnson; married John Patrick Burdett, September 10, 1989 (divorced, 1991); married Leslie William Webb, 1994; children: two. Education: Attended Clayfield College and University of Queensland, 1975-77. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, travel, films, food, surfing.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Margaret Connolly and Associates, P.O. Box 48, Paddington, New South Wales 2021, Australia.

CAREER: Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Australia, cadet journalist, 1975-77; Australian Women's Weekly, Sydney, Australia, journalist, 1977-78; Sun-Herald, Sydney, Australia, journalist, 1980; Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, feature writer, 1980-82; National Times, correspondent from Queensland, Australia, 1982-84. Novelist, 1984—. Resident at Keesing Studio, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, until 1992.

MEMBER: International PEN, Australian Journalists' Association, Australian Society of Authors.

AWARDS, HONORS: Flying Lessons was short-listed for Victorian Premier's Literary Prize, 1990; fellowships from Literature Board, Australia Council, 1986-92.

WRITINGS:

(Coeditor) Latitudes: New Writing from the North, University of Queensland Press (Queensland, Australia), 1986.

Messages from Chaos (novel), Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1987.

Flying Lessons (novel), Faber & Faber (London, England), 1990.

A Big Life (novel), Faber & Faber (London, England), 1993.

Hungry Ghosts (novel), Washington Square Press (New York, NY), 2002.

A Better Woman: A Memoir, Washington Square Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor of short stories to literary magazines.

SIDELIGHTS: Susan Johnson made her American debut with Flying Lessons, a novel about two women and their individual quests. The story centers on Ria Lubrano, who is unsatisfied with her life in Sydney and moves to Queensland, where she hopes to find her brother. Queensland is also where Ria's father and grandmother were born, and she relates her grandmother's story to members of the commune where she lives. She feels a kinship with her grandmother, Emma, who, as Ria understands it, defied her family and married a man of whom they did not approve. "Ms. Johnson's prose is charged with feeling, insight and rambunctious wit," wrote Andy Solomon in the New York Times Book Review. ". . . Ria and Emma's shared desire to take wing feels so universal that it evokes recognition rather than surprise." A critic for Kirkus Reviews, however, found that "Ria and her flight are too minor in key for the significance that Johnson tries to attach to them. Evocative descriptions of Australia, but this is too laden with unfulfilled intellectual ambitions to really take off."

A Big Life is the story of Billy Hayes, who is sold by his father to a group of traveling tumblers. An accomplished gymnast of his own making, Billy is taken from his native Australia to England with the increasingly popular acrobatic show. The novel follows Billy through his growing up in a vaudeville setting and through a bad marriage that ends in divorce. As an adult, he must face the fact that the world can be harsh despite his loving nature. Linda Barrett Osborne commented in the New York Times Book Review that the book is "written with a touch so gentle that its sadness grows slowly, imperceptibly, like the passage from youth to middle age." In Kirkus Reviews a critic commented that in this novel the reader will find "not, in the end, your average hero, or your average story, as Johnson movingly celebrates the resilience of the human spirit."

Hungry Ghosts examines the rise and fall of a friendship. Friends from childhood, inhibited Rachel and exuberant Anne-Louise exemplify opposite personalities. Rachel is a successful artist and Anne-Louise is recovering from a psychotic breakdown when they reconnect and renew their friendship in Hong Kong. The "ghosts" of the title refers to the Chinese term for Westerners, and these two, joined by a troubled futures broker, drift through the city looking for something to fill their emptiness. When both women fall in love with the man, himself a tortured soul, the inevitable outcome is tragic. In her review for Booklist Margaret Flanagan wrote, "The deceptively matter-of-fact narrative provides a compelling examination of love, dependency, and loss." Willa Williams, writing in Library Journal, thought the plot predictable and the women's characters unsympathetic and clichéd, but added that "Anne-Louise's emotional self-destruction is finely drawn and heartbreaking."

After the birth of her second child, Johnson wrote a book of memoirs documenting her transformation to motherhood. A Better Woman: A Memoir recalls what she thought it would be like to be a mother and describes the ensuing jolt into reality. In addition, her second birth left her with a painful injury that required perseverance to have acknowledged and repaired. Margaret Connolly, writing for Publishers Weekly, said Johnson's "voice [is] at once literate and excruciatingly intimate. . . . Johnson provides an affecting memoir of loss and pain, strength and survival, fear and despair, love and joy. She successfully captures the unique season of her life that made her 'a better woman,' through both the living and the writing of it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Aethlon, spring, 1994, p. 161.

Australian Book Review, October, 1993, p. 5; July, 1994, p. 32; October, 1996, p. 42; October, 1999, p. 6.

Booklist, April 15, 2002, Margaret Flanagan, review of A Better Woman: A Memoir, p. 1375, and Hungry Ghosts, p. 1382.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1991; July 15, 1993, p. 878; February 1, 2002, reviews of Hungry Ghosts, p. 128, and A Better Woman, p. 160.

Library Journal, August, 1993, Elizabeth Mellett, review of A Big Life, p. 151; April 1, 2002, Wilda Williams, review of Hungry Ghosts, p. 140; May 1, 2002, Rachel Collins, review of A Better Woman, p. 120.

New York Times Book Review, November 17, 1991, p. 20; December 19, 1993, Linda Barrett Osborne, review of A Big Life, p. 18.

Observer (London, England), September 12, 1993, p. 53.

Publishers Weekly, August 31, 1992, p. 72; September 6, 1993, p. 85; February 18, 2002, review of Hungry Ghosts, p. 73; March 4, 2002, review of A Better Woman, p. 68.

Times Literary Supplement, September 3, 1993, Roz Kaveney, review of A Big Life, p. 24.*