Evelyn Juers Exile. "Scintillating and rather magical... "House of Exile" is an extraordinary book, and a really rare accomplishment."() "The Recluse" (2012) is a long biographical essay about Eliza Emily Donnithorne, who lived most of her life in isolation in a large house in the Sydney suburb of Newtown. She is thought to have been the model for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ "Great Expectations", who was jilted at the altar, and became a recluse, wearing her wedding dress, and keeping her wedding banquet set, until the day she died. But did it really happen like this? "The Recluse"
Miss Havisham Pip rushes back in and saves her. However, she has suffered severe burns to the front of her torso (she is laid on her back), up to the throat. The last words she speaks in the novel are (in a delirium) to Pip, referencing both Estella and a note she, Miss Havisham, has given him with her signature: "Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her!'" A surgeon dresses her burns, and says that they are "far from hopeless". However, despite rallying for a time, she dies a few weeks later, leaving Estella as her chief beneficiary,