A Descant For Gossips
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: unclipped dj with small tears. Name penned on fep, small ink tick on verso of half-title page. Light foxing on book block.
In the claustrophobic heat of a small Queensland town, cruelty wears the mask of neighbourly interest — and no one is safe from its reach. Thea Astley's A Descant for Gossips chronicles the destruction wrought upon a young, sensitive outsider, Vinny, and her teacher, Hilda Lacey, as the relentless machinery of small-town gossip grinds both women toward ruin. With razor-sharp precision, Astley dissects the provincial Australian community, exposing the violence that lurks beneath its surface of mundane respectability. A landmark of mid-twentieth-century Australian literature, A Descant for Gossips — Astley's second novel, first published in 1960 — establishes the unflinching moral vision that would define her celebrated career. Her prose is spare yet devastating, wielding irony and compassion in equal measure as she indicts the conformity and casual cruelty of collective judgment. The novel stands as a powerful argument for the dignity of the individual against the tyranny of the crowd, leaving the reader to ask: in a town where everyone watches, who is truly innocent?
Author: Thea Astley
Format: Hardback
Published: 1960, Angus and Robertson
Genre: Australian history
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: unclipped dj with small tears. Name penned on fep, small ink tick on verso of half-title page. Light foxing on book block.
In the claustrophobic heat of a small Queensland town, cruelty wears the mask of neighbourly interest — and no one is safe from its reach. Thea Astley's A Descant for Gossips chronicles the destruction wrought upon a young, sensitive outsider, Vinny, and her teacher, Hilda Lacey, as the relentless machinery of small-town gossip grinds both women toward ruin. With razor-sharp precision, Astley dissects the provincial Australian community, exposing the violence that lurks beneath its surface of mundane respectability. A landmark of mid-twentieth-century Australian literature, A Descant for Gossips — Astley's second novel, first published in 1960 — establishes the unflinching moral vision that would define her celebrated career. Her prose is spare yet devastating, wielding irony and compassion in equal measure as she indicts the conformity and casual cruelty of collective judgment. The novel stands as a powerful argument for the dignity of the individual against the tyranny of the crowd, leaving the reader to ask: in a town where everyone watches, who is truly innocent?