Foxbaby (1990)

Alma Porch, novelist and aspiring dramatist, is hired to teach a course in Trinity College's "Better Body Through the Arts" summer program for overweight adults.

On the rundown campus in the remote Australian outback, Alma is surrounded by starving matrons, orgies of sex and gluttony, and an eccentric group of staff and students who are eager to open themselves to the transforming possibilities of her screenplay, "Foxybaby."

As the students develop their roles and film this story of a father trying to rescue his runaway daughter and her baby from discos and drugs, the play becomes a kind of therapy and begins to unite and console the lonely hearts of this unlikely group in surprising ways.

In this wise and frequently uproarious book, Elizabeth Jolley is at her provocative best.