AustLit

'Is there anything more deeply cursed than being a woman in your 20s? Novelists have been mining this period of life for years, but few get it as well as Madeleine Gray, whose debut, in a droll internet-style voice, hits the nail on the head. Reading this book was like being thrust underneath an X-ray machine and seeing all the most repulsive parts of myself; like picking at a scab repeatedly, knowing it will scar but delighting in the sick sensation. Disgusting! More please!' (Introduction)

'“I want a surface that resists, like a wall, not opens, like a gate,” wrote the painter Grace Hartigan in 1956. Associated for a time with the abstract expressionist movement, she depicted the bridal shop windows of Manhattan with roughened gestures and vivid hues. In Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel, The Modern, Hartigan is something of a muse for the narrator, Sophia, who is completing her dissertation on the artist while she works at MoMA.' (Publication summary)