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'Hannah Mulvey left her island home as a teenager. But her stubborn, defiant mother is dying, and now Hannah has returned to Chesil, taking up a teaching post at the tiny schoolhouse, doing what she can in the long days of this final year.
'But though Hannah cannot pinpoint exactly when it begins, something threatens her small community. A girl disappears entirely from class. Odd reports and rumours reach her through her young charges. People mutter on street corners, the church bell tolls through the night and the island's women gather at strange hours...And then the miracles begin.
'A page-turning, thought-provoking portrayal of a remote community caught up in a collective moment of madness, of good intentions turned terribly awry. A blistering examination of truth and power, and how we might tell one from the other.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
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Dedication : 'For my family and for Lucas, with my gratitude and love'
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Epigraph : 'I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a different light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape [...] I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it is in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.' - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Dyslexic edition.
Works about this Work
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What I’m Reading
2020
single work
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020; -
More Story Than Girl
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , August 2020;
— Review of The Salt Madonna 2020 single work novel'Since colonisation, stories of lost white children have been a feature of Australian literature. Elspeth Tilley calls it the ‘white-vanishing’ trope, arguing that stories of lost children, compulsively retold, enable white Australians to assume a victim position. Obscuring a history of violent dispossession, the lost white child functions as a symbol of national innocence. The lost white girl, in her spotless lace and linen, is where innocence is doubled down on. While the search for the lost girl offers an opportunity to assert national character, the mystery of what happens to all those cupids and Botticelli angels, merging prettily into the landscape, into the nonspecific threat of ‘out there’, remains a compelling lacuna around which the community rallies.' (Introduction)
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Splintered by Salt
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 419 2020; (p. 26)
— Review of The Salt Madonna 2020 single work novel 'From the mainland, the fictional Chesil Island appears to float on the horizon. Perched above its bay, a statue of the Virgin Mary spreads its arms, its robes ‘faded and splintered by salt’. This icon of the miraculous and maternal, crafted from trees and symbolic of the invasion and settlement of Indigenous land, is imposing and worn, revered and neglected.' (Introduction)
-
Splintered by Salt
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 419 2020; (p. 26)
— Review of The Salt Madonna 2020 single work novel 'From the mainland, the fictional Chesil Island appears to float on the horizon. Perched above its bay, a statue of the Virgin Mary spreads its arms, its robes ‘faded and splintered by salt’. This icon of the miraculous and maternal, crafted from trees and symbolic of the invasion and settlement of Indigenous land, is imposing and worn, revered and neglected.' (Introduction) -
More Story Than Girl
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , August 2020;
— Review of The Salt Madonna 2020 single work novel'Since colonisation, stories of lost white children have been a feature of Australian literature. Elspeth Tilley calls it the ‘white-vanishing’ trope, arguing that stories of lost children, compulsively retold, enable white Australians to assume a victim position. Obscuring a history of violent dispossession, the lost white child functions as a symbol of national innocence. The lost white girl, in her spotless lace and linen, is where innocence is doubled down on. While the search for the lost girl offers an opportunity to assert national character, the mystery of what happens to all those cupids and Botticelli angels, merging prettily into the landscape, into the nonspecific threat of ‘out there’, remains a compelling lacuna around which the community rallies.' (Introduction)
-
What I’m Reading
2020
single work
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020;
