The name Kerry Greenwood is well known to lovers of quality literature from around the globe. The writer over the years has been delighting loyal fans not only with beautiful works about the life, life and fate of the adult population of Australia, but also masterfully creating beautiful children's works filled with kindness and fabulous magic. During her long creative career, which, by the way, is still successfully continuing, the woman has written many fascinating stories for book lovers of all ages. Surprisingly, the talent of Kerry Greenwood is truly inexhaustible, and the writer fills book after book with her positive atmosphere.
The fame of the recognized master of the detective, a talented storyteller, a skilled intriguer and a great inventor and dreamer has not left the writer since the release of her first book more than forty years ago. Currently, to all of the above titles, the title of “Honorary Writer of Australia” has also been added, more than once confirmed by various authoritative literary critics, as well as various awards in the field of fiction and journalistic literature.
A writer
Kerry Greenwood is perhaps one of the most fun, interesting and humorous foreign writers who set to work in the detective genre. It is difficult to find a more resourceful inventor and a tireless storyteller than she is. With calm equanimity, Kerry describes the exciting adventures of his heroes, carefully working out the characters' characters and focusing the reader on the smallest details, which for the first time seem completely unimportant, but play a key role in the story.
early years
Kerry Greenwood was born June 17, 1954 in the small town of Footscray, which was located near Melbourne. The Greenwood family owned a small farm and was quite prosperous, which allowed Kerry to get a good education in a private school. The girl did not like to study, but she had an incredible craving for studying everything that was happening around. She was interested in absolutely everything: from the installation of a water tap to the principles of the lawn mower. The young years of the writer passed in a carefree atmosphere of games and constant fun. As a child, her father took her to work with him, and Kerry was forced to seek entertainment, or play with the children of exactly the same farmers.
After graduating from school, the girl failed the exam at the university and was forced to go look for a job in local institutions, but could not get anywhere else, having moved to Melbourne.
Life Searches
The difficult process of finding money in the biography of Kerry Greenwood was associated with the equally difficult process of finding himself. The purposeful and lively girl could not find her place in life, which forced her to often change her place of work and occupation. Often the changes were so radical that even Kerry herself was shocked.
One of Greenwood's first classes was the performance of Australian folklore. The girl was very pretty, besides she had outstanding vocal abilities and artistic talent, which significantly affected her popularity. Kerry Greenwood quite quickly became quite famous in narrow circles of folk music lovers and even recorded several songs in the studio, putting all her work in several tapes with demos. However, fate decreed otherwise - and the record, on which Kerry worked a lot, never came out.
Without losing hope for the future and changing her profession, Kerry gets a job at a textile factory, where she acquires a large number of skills in working with fabrics. After working at the plant for about two years, the girl leaves the enterprise and gets a job in the studio, where for several months, using the experience gained at the factory, she works as a cutter.
Soon, working with textiles annoys a young woman, and Kerry Greenwood goes to cooking classes, receives a cook’s certificate and for some time works in her specialty. In those days, restaurants in Australia had a relatively small salary, and soon the ambitious Greenwood set off to look for a new job.
Closer to the real destination!
Good knowledge of several languages allows her to get a translator in an independent office, which specializes in adapting various "tabloid literature". For some time, Greenwood translated melodramas, detective stories, family reading literature, and romance novels.
The uniform work with almost identical texts forces the talented girl to look for a new occupation, which has become the position of assistant director at the local theater. From there, Katherine gets on Australian television, immediately becoming the director of several popular science programs. The girl gives several years of her life to the television sphere of her native country, actively engaged in not only the creative, but also the technical aspects of video production.
The innate taste, a delicate sense of style, the ability to work in a team and fulfill the promise quickly make Kerry a well-known television director by the standards of the country, and soon the girl begins to occupy the post of executive producer in fairly large projects.
Kerry Greenwood liked working with video materials, but subconsciously she felt that she was still working in an area far from her true creative vocation. Having extensive experience in writing scripts and translating fiction, as well as a huge stock of life stories and interesting memories, the girl decides to start working on her first novel.
Writer career
Surprisingly, the beginning of the girl’s creative career coincided with her graduation from the University of Melbourne, where Greenwood studied for five years on a course in theoretical social science and jurisprudence. The girl was incredibly interested in the processes taking place in society, as well as the reasons leading to these processes, and this interest soon merged in her soul with a creative beginning, becoming the basis of a fast literary career and the popularity of Kerry Greenwood books.
Realizing her true vocation, the girl first of all moves to the province and gets a job in the district court of the town of Futskray, which allows her to receive a guaranteed salary and to devote herself completely to literary experiments.
Having tried her hand in the small prose genre and published in the local newspaper several everyday stories about the residents of the suburbs, Kerry decided to write a series of novels of a detective nature, which was directly facilitated by her official work. Few believed at the time that in the future, all of Kerry Greenwood's books would become global bestsellers, and her detective novels would win the hearts of millions of readers around the world.
The writer herself, recalling these times, says with a smile that she had everything necessary for success — a room, a typewriter, and a lot of free time.
Miss Fisher Series
In 1985, Kerry Greenwood's first book about Miss Fisher, which is a practicing private detective, was released. The debut novel was an overwhelming success. Of course, the fame of the literary works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Greenwood did not receive, but gained fame in serious literary circles in Australia. Inspired by success, the writer takes up the job, creating an anthology of works about the heroine loved by readers in a few years.
In the early nineties of the twentieth century, many publishers decide to reprint all of Kerry Greenwood's books about Miss Fisher in order, which gives readers a unique opportunity to get acquainted with all the adventures of an extraordinary detective girl.
"Earthly joys"
The novel about a girl accountant who opened a bakery in the center of Melbourne and quite by accident became an outstanding detective, is partially based on the biography of the writer herself. This bizarre title appeared in the book because, according to the author’s sincere assurances, it describes exclusively worldly joys of a simple life. Such small, pleasant things, like a delicious dinner, a warm hearth or a horseback ride in the early morning.
“Earthly Joys” Kerry Greenwood not only repeated the success of the author’s previous detective series, but also became a special novel that showed the public reading a completely different facet of the woman’s writing skills.
Personal life
According to the writer herself, her personal life is “three cats, an old Apple computer and some time devoted to needlework.” The woman devoted herself entirely to a literary career, having lost the very simple worldly joys that she describes in her works.
Popularity
The fame of the writer increased significantly after all the books of Kerry Greenwood about Miss Fisher in sequence were reprinted in huge print runs. It was then that a woman became popular not only in English-speaking countries, but throughout the world, as the anthology was translated into many languages. Some translations were made by Greenwood herself.
Criticism
The serious literary community did not immediately accept Greenwood's work. Many critics disagreed about the originality of her work, recalling the adventures of Miss Marple, written by Agatha Christie, or the tireless and ubiquitous father of Brown, who came from the pen of the famous writer Gilbert Chesterton.
However, later a number of literary scholars still recognized the writer's works as original. Critics noted the amazing originality of the presentation, the simplicity and clarity of the plot, combined with incredibly intricate intrigues and secrets. Greenwood’s creative style, which was first demonstrated in Kerry Greenwood’s debut novel about Miss Fisher, “The Labyrinth,” was also praised.
Reviews
Since the publication of the very first detective novel in the provincial publishing house of her hometown, Kerry has received only positive reviews about her works. Of course, there were those people who, for one reason or another, did not like the creative experiments of the girl, but most of the comments still carried kind words and calls to continue on the literary path.
The writer admits that in difficult times she always reads letters from ordinary people, as simple hard workers as she herself, and this is what gives her the strength to continue working and see only good in everything.