AustLit

'One of Stephanie Bishop’s major preoccupations in her previous novel, 2015’s award-winning The Other Side of the World, is parenthood: the vulnerability it causes and the shifts it brings to identity and one’s deepest longings. One of the two protagonists, depressed Charlotte, thinks of motherhood: “It should be a joy. I should know how to make it a joy. Today, though, the repulsion overwhelms – this need to be alone, away from the children.” The Other Side of the World is a linear narrative but full of emotional shifts heightened by the swings of Charlotte’s mental health and her husband Henry’s nostalgia for a sense of belonging. It’s anchored by Bishop’s exceptional recording of the details of domestic life, and their significance. Her stunning writing and the way she blends the concrete and the ethereal made this earlier novel complex yet accessible.' (Introduction)