{"product_id":"2026100009462-secondhand-a-descant-for-gossips","title":"A Descant For Gossips","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: 1st ed.,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Wear and tear with damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Previous owner\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: unclipped dj with small tears. Name penned on fep, small ink tick on verso of half-title page. Light foxing on book block. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\n\nA 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?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203180765403,"sku":"2026100009462-SECONDHAND","price":100.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/dd243c57-07ab-411b-a88b-b4d99462554e.png?v=1788145030","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100009462-secondhand-a-descant-for-gossips","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}