June Black (1910–2009) was a multi-faceted artist, painter, ceramicist, and writer, who exhibited in the 1950s and 1960s, battling for visibility in a male-dominated art world. Her work reflected her extensive reading and interest in existentialism, surrealism and the theatre of the absurd. Sheridan Keith’s biography of her mother quotes generously from the journals June kept over forty years to keep track of her extensive reading, her art practice and her life, and from June’s absurdist play The Purple Umbrella. The result is a biography that sizzles with erudition and humour and gives a rare insight into a fascinating woman ahead of her time.