AustLit

'Daisy & Woolf is a novel that will inevitably elicit comparisons to Michael Cunningham's The Hours for its fictional engagement with Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. But Cahill's novel very much stands on its own and is worthy of admiration for its handling of complex histories, its deeply woven intertextualities, and its presentation of Daisy, Woolf's minor character, as fully fleshed and realized.' (Introduction)

'It is difficult to overvalue the currency of modernism right now. Over the last decade, a plethora of scholarly writers have addressed modernism’s imperial legacies and in so doing have extended its geographic and temporal boundaries. Contemporary writers such as Tom McCarthy, Zadie Smith, Sophie Cunningham and Jack Cox have also engaged in varied ways with modernism’s aesthetic and revolutionary bequests. Michelle Cahill’s debut novel, Daisy & Woolf, is preoccupied with Virginia Woolf’s portrayal of a Eurasian character, Daisy Simmons, in Mrs Dalloway. ' (Introduction)   

'Michelle Cahill’s debut novel Daisy & Woolf is accomplished and exhilarating. A re-reading of Virginia Woolf’s iconic modernist novel Mrs Dalloway, it excavates and reconstructs the literary worlding of a minor character, Daisy Simmons – the ‘dark, adorable’ Eurasian woman that Clarissa Dalloway’s longtime admirer, Peter Walsh, plans to marry. If you are thinking about the coupling of Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre you are on the right track.' (Introduction)