Melbourne-based Cunningham, has crammed her first work of fiction in fifteen years with a cornucopia of uncompromising detail from the life and times of Leonard Woolf and, presumably, her own life and times. Like Cunningham, Alice, the novel’s protagonist, is a writer and writing teacher. In the late 1900s, Alice begins to research a novel about Woolf, not realising he would haunt her, inhabiting her psyche for decades and into the next century, while she wrangles with the fallout of world politics, global warming, family crises, online comments, a pandemic, and the weighty lassitude of living through this time in history. Angst-ridden, funny, and touching, the book abounds with quotes, footnotes and references that will inspire further reading.
Share your thoughts: If you could have a conversation with a historical figure, who would you talk to? What would you ask them?
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