The Other Side of the World
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2.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
WINNER - Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2015
Shortlisted - The Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2015
Shortlisted - ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2016
Longlisted - The Stella Prize 2016
A story of melancholy beauty that proves the only thing harder than losing home is trying to find it again.
Cambridge, 1963.
Charlotte is struggling. With motherhood, with the changes marriage and parenthood bring, with losing the time and the energy to paint. Her husband, Henry, wants things to be as they were and can't face the thought of another English winter.
A brochure slipped through the letterbox slot brings him the answer: 'Australia brings out the best in you'.
Despite wanting to stay in the place that she knows, Charlotte is too worn out to fight. Before she has a chance to realise what it will mean, she is travelling to the other side of the world. Arriving in Perth, the southern sun shines a harsh light on both Henry and Charlotte and slowly reveals that their new life is not the answer either was hoping for. Charlotte is left wondering if there is anywhere she belongs and how far she'll go to find her way home . . .
'profoundly moving … a literary tour de force' - Australian Women's Weekly
'the precision and flair of the writing is breathtaking' - Weekend Australian
'a mature and accomplished debut' - Hobart Mercury
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A beautiful, harrowing portrait of mental illness and the endless search for home, this sophomore novel by Bishop (The Singing) depicts a gripping psychological descent that touches on the saddest of truths: once you leave, you can never truly find home again. Painter Charlotte Blackwood thrives in the gray winters of 1960s England, until the birth of her first child spirals her into a disoriented, heartbroken world of postpartum depression and loss of self. Her husband, Henry, an Anglo-Indian professor who has never felt at home in England, receives a brochure about emigration to Australia, and decides that this is what the family needs to make a new start. Overtired and pregnant again, Charlotte reluctantly agrees, and within a few years, the family is resettled in the Perth countryside. But all is not as Henry hoped: he is met with racism at his new university. Henry's questioning of his identity slowly consumes him until he can't complete the book he's writing, or get through his lectures without drifting. Charlotte, as lost as ever, finds solace in a neighbor's friend, Nicholas, as she longs for England and sinks ever deeper into a world of infidelity to find herself. Full of excellent prose, especially in descriptions of landscapes, this story leaves its characters and readers wondering what is at the root of identity and nostalgia, and what a sense of home really means.
