Theory & Practice (Michelle de Kretser, Text)

Theory & Practice is a quietly experimental new novel from two-time Miles Franklin winner Michelle de Kretser (Scary Monsters). Set mainly in St Kilda in 1986, it captures a snapshot in the life of its narrator, a young woman recently transplanted from Sydney to begin her postgraduate studies on the novels of Virginia Woolf. With a narrator who reflects on her evolving approach to writing, de Kretser has written a novel that doesn’t read like a novel but rather an artfully melded combination of fiction, memoir and essay. In this form, being not quite fiction but not quite nonfiction, Theory & Practice occupies a hazy in-between, exploring the intersection of its titular concepts and carving out a genre of its own. Reading as autofiction, the novel makes it impossible to know where de Kretser’s reflections end and her imaginings begin, but each moment and musing of the narrator’s chaotic inner life ring true. As ever with de Kretser, there is a timelessness to her prose—the novel feels entirely contemporary, and yet it reads as though it may have been in the canon for decades. ‘Writing back’ to Woolf’s literary legacy, Theory & Practice calls to mind Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s But the Girl and echoes Sigrid Nunez’s A Feather on the Breath of God, sitting at a neat intersection of the two, where it is sure to please fans of both.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Marina Sano (she/her) is a Japanese and Australian reviewer, editor, and bookstore owner. She co-founded Amplify Bookstore and is an advocate for more diverse and representative publishing. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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