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.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the suffocating intimacy of a small Australian town, where every whisper carries the weight of judgement, A Descant for Gossips chronicles the quiet devastation wrought by community cruelty upon two outsiders whose only crime is their difference. Thea Astley's debut novel centers on Vinnie, a sensitive schoolgirl, and her fragile friendship with the enigmatic new teacher, Rowlands, as the town's relentless gossip machine conspires to destroy them both with ruthless, almost casual efficiency. Astley writes with a surgeon's precision and a poet's sensibility, dissecting the moral cowardice that lurks beneath the surface of ordinary suburban life in mid-twentieth-century Queensland. Her prose is taut and ironic, illuminating how conformity weaponises itself against individuality — a theme she would return to throughout her celebrated career, which earned her four Miles Franklin Awards. A devastating and beautifully rendered portrait of innocence crushed under the heel of small-minded provincialism, this novel asks a question that lingers long after the final page: who, truly, are the monsters in our midst?
Author: Thea Astley
Format: Hardback
Published: 1968, The Jacaranda Press
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the suffocating intimacy of a small Australian town, where every whisper carries the weight of judgement, A Descant for Gossips chronicles the quiet devastation wrought by community cruelty upon two outsiders whose only crime is their difference. Thea Astley's debut novel centers on Vinnie, a sensitive schoolgirl, and her fragile friendship with the enigmatic new teacher, Rowlands, as the town's relentless gossip machine conspires to destroy them both with ruthless, almost casual efficiency. Astley writes with a surgeon's precision and a poet's sensibility, dissecting the moral cowardice that lurks beneath the surface of ordinary suburban life in mid-twentieth-century Queensland. Her prose is taut and ironic, illuminating how conformity weaponises itself against individuality — a theme she would return to throughout her celebrated career, which earned her four Miles Franklin Awards. A devastating and beautifully rendered portrait of innocence crushed under the heel of small-minded provincialism, this novel asks a question that lingers long after the final page: who, truly, are the monsters in our midst?