The Aunt's Story
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
Markings: No markings
Condition remarks: Foxing on block - does not extend internally.
A landmark of Australian modernist fiction, The Aunt's Story chronicles the inner life of Theodora Goodman, an unconventional, plain-featured woman who refuses to be defined by the domestic expectations placed upon her by family and society. Following her mother's death, Theodora embarks on a solitary journey from Australia to Europe and eventually America, and the novel traces her psychological unraveling with breathtaking intensity as the boundaries between reality and imagination dissolve. Patrick White constructs the narrative across three distinct sections, each shifting in style and tone, moving from realist portraiture to a dreamlike, almost hallucinatory interiority that places the work firmly in the tradition of high modernism. With prose that is dense, lyrical, and uncompromising, White argues implicitly that the life of the mind — however fragile or fractured — possesses a wholeness and dignity that the conventional world cannot recognize or contain. The Aunt's Story stands as one of the most searching portraits of female solitude and spiritual independence in twentieth-century literature.
Author: Patrick White
Format: Hardback
Published: 1958, Eyre & Spottiswoode
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Condition remarks: Foxing on block - does not extend internally.
A landmark of Australian modernist fiction, The Aunt's Story chronicles the inner life of Theodora Goodman, an unconventional, plain-featured woman who refuses to be defined by the domestic expectations placed upon her by family and society. Following her mother's death, Theodora embarks on a solitary journey from Australia to Europe and eventually America, and the novel traces her psychological unraveling with breathtaking intensity as the boundaries between reality and imagination dissolve. Patrick White constructs the narrative across three distinct sections, each shifting in style and tone, moving from realist portraiture to a dreamlike, almost hallucinatory interiority that places the work firmly in the tradition of high modernism. With prose that is dense, lyrical, and uncompromising, White argues implicitly that the life of the mind — however fragile or fractured — possesses a wholeness and dignity that the conventional world cannot recognize or contain. The Aunt's Story stands as one of the most searching portraits of female solitude and spiritual independence in twentieth-century literature.