About the Author:
GAIL JONES teaches literature, cinema and cultural studies at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of Dreams of Speaking (Harvill/Vintage) for which she was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. One previous novel Sixty Lights has been published in the UK for which she was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2004.
From Publishers Weekly:
The resilient daughter of a doomed, loveless couple narrates the luminous third novel from Australian Jones (Sixty Lights). Perdita Keene recalls her childhood as the Australian-born daughter of a British anthropologist and his wife, who come to the outback in 1930 for Perdita's WWI-veteran father Nicholas's fieldwork. Perdita is unwanted, and her mother, Stella, withdraws. Nicholas forces himself sexually on the local Aboriginal women. Among his victims is an orphaned teenager, Mary, who is brought from the local convent to take care of Perdita when Stella is hospitalized. Mary and Perdita develop a close, sisterly relationship as Mary teaches Perdita indigenous wisdom that is a far cry from what Stella and her beloved Shakespeare impart. Nicholas's violence precipitates a tragedy, and the expiation of Perdita's long-held guilt, for her father's crimes among other things, edifies this beautifully composed work. (June)
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