After Story
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother, Della, on a tour of England's most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past. Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine's older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear. Ambitious and engrossing, After Story celebrates the extraordinary power of words and the quiet spaces between. We can be ready to listen, but are we ready to hear?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The third novel from Larissa Behrendt—a Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman whose talents span the law, academia, writing, advocacy and filmmaking—is a superb look at the way stories of the past resonate with meaning today. When lawyer Jasmine invites her mother, Della, on a literary tour of England, she hopes the trip will close the gap that formed between them when Jasmine’s sister, Brittany, disappeared aged seven. As they explore England’s most revered literary sites, old grievances and family secrets surface. The juxtaposition of English and First Nations storytelling cultures, explored through Della’s memories of stories from home and Jasmine’s impressions of the birthplace of the books she escaped into as a child, reveal the unequal cultural value ascribed to written and oral narrative traditions. This profoundly moving and darkly funny book reverberates with the strain of grief and trauma. But After Story also reminds us that when we tend to the present moment, the people we love, and the stories of those who have gone, solace can follow.
