Local author Margaret Lygnos has released her fifth novel, The House.
The novel, released in June, follows a group of women and children who had nowhere to live find an old house. Living together in the house, they become more than friends, providing support, understanding and love for each other at both the beginning and the end of life.
Lygnos said she started to write 30 years ago, and was inspired by her uncle, James Aldridge, an Australian-British writer and journalist known for his novels about the war.
“He was quite well known overseas and in Australia and I showed my short stories to him a long time ago and he liked them. He said ‘you should keep writing’ but then I didn’t until about 10 years ago,” she said.
“I started writing about a Greek Island that my husband and I went to which he had a connection to and I enjoyed writing about that so then I wrote one about my family and then I just started writing fiction.”
Lygnos was a nurse before she retired, and now spends her days writing at her home in Macedon, weaving pieces of the community within her writing.
“That’s where all of these imagined stories have occurred really, more or less,” she said.
“The Macedon Ranges is quite big and I’ve looked at things and in my mind, I can imagine that fruit shop or that place to meet or whatever, but I don’t use the names.
“These are not stories about a particular person, but they are inspired by things I’ve heard or seen or have been told.”
The House is available locally at the Trading Post in Mount Macedon, as well as available at book retailers online.
