The Aunt's Story (Unabridged‪)‬

From Australia's first Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick White comes the story of Theodora Goodman, a lonely middle-aged woman who travels to France, and then to America, where she experiences what is either a gradual mental breakdown or an epiphanic revelation.

With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel.

But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.