Jacob's Folly

Jacob's Folly

Jacob's Folly tells the story of three people linked in the most unexpected of ways. Masha is a teenager born into an orthodox Jewish family, who longs to escape the claustrophobia of her home life; Leslie is a middle aged family man who also finds himself pushing against the constraints of all his responsibilities; while Jacob - well, Jacob is an eighteenth century man who finds himself reborn as a fly in the twenty-first century.

From this highly quirky premise, Rebecca Miller has conjured a novel full of warmth and insight, that offers a wonderful portrait of the intricacies of family life, and of the extent to which we are and are not in control of our own destinies. It marks Rebecca Miller as one of our most distinctive and beguiling novelists.


Rebecca Miller worked as a painter and actress before becoming a writer and director. She is the author of the short story collection Personla Velocity, her feature film adaptation of which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and the writer-director of Angela, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and the most recently, the novel and film The Privale Lives of Pippa Lee, which was selected for Richard and Judy's summer reading club.


Jacob's Folly
Allen and Unwin
Author: Rebecca Miller
ISBN: 9780857868978
RRP: $29.99