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Gail Jones Gail Jones i(A26750 works by)
Born: Established: 1955 Harvey, Harvey area, Mandurah - Harvey area, Far Southwest Western Australia, Western Australia, ;
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 5 y separately published work icon One Another Gail Jones , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2024 27136620 2024 single work novel

'Eminent Australian author Gail Jones examines the intersections of art and life via a fictionalised biography of Joseph Conrad in her distinctively immersive and rich prose.

'At Cambridge University, in the summer of 1992, Australian student Helen is completing her thesis on Joseph Conrad. But she is distracted by a charming and dangerous lover, Justin, and by a ghost manuscript, her anti-thesis, which she has left on a train.

'Haunted by this loss and others, by Justin's destructive tendencies and by details of Conrad's life, Helen is unmoored. And then the drama of the lost manuscript sets in motion a series of events-with possibly fatal consequences.

'In her masterly new novel, Gail Jones traverses the borders between art and life, between life and death, in a journey through literary history and emotional landscapes. Elegantly written, deftly crafted, One Another covers new territories of grief, memory and narrative.' (Publication summary)

1 From Dysfunction and Provincialism to an Elegant Literary Life : Gail Jones Reviews the ‘brilliant’ First Biography of Shirley Hazzard Gail Jones , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 14 December 2022;

— Review of Shirley Hazzard : A Writing Life Brigitta Olubas , 2022 single work biography

'When Shirley Hazzard received the National Book Award in 2003 for The Great Fire in the Marriot Ballroom in Times Square, the other guest of honour was Stephen King, who was there to receive a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The contrast of acclamations and models of value could not have been more profound. King took the opportunity to speak of popularity and populism as the marks of literary success; Hazzard feistily defended reading across time, the nuanced experiences literature affords, and the private and complex pleasures that are irreducible to sales, fame or notoriety.'  (Introduction)

1 5 y separately published work icon Salonika Burning Gail Jones , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2022 24962211 2022 single work novel historical fiction

'Greece, 1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war.

'Amid the destruction, there are those who have come to the frontlines to heal: surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of these people—Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley—are at the centre of Gail Jones’s extraordinary new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones’s imagination these four lives intertwine and ramify, compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world.

'Immersive and gripping, Salonika Burning illuminates not only the devastation of war but also the vast social upheaval of the times. It shows Gail Jones to be at the height of her powers.' (Publication summary)

1 The Four Dreams of Lu Xun Gail Jones , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Antipodean China 2021;
1 From Our Shadows Gail Jones , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: A Book of Friends : In Honour of J. M. Coetzee on His 80th Birthday 2020; (p. 91-98)
1 Gail Jones : Australian Literature is Chronically Underfunded - Here's How to Help it Flourish Gail Jones , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 9 November 2020;

'This is an edited version of author Gail Jones’ submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the creative industries.

'Literary culture carries profound social value. In general terms it is essential to employment, cultural literacy and understanding of community, as well as to Australia’s post-pandemic recovery and growth. It is also radically underfunded and in urgent need of new support.

'I am particularly concerned with the low level of investment in literature through state and federal funding agencies compared with other art forms.'

1 6 y separately published work icon Our Shadows Gail Jones , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2020 19549463 2020 single work novel

'Our Shadows is a story about three generations of family living in Kalgoorlie, where gold was discovered in 1893 by an Irish-born prospector named Paddy Hannan, whose own history weaves in and out of this beguiling novel.

'Nell and Frances are sisters who are close enough in age to be mistaken for twins. Raised by their grandparents, they now live in Sydney. Each in her own way struggles with the loss of their parents.

'Little by little the sisters grow to understand the imaginative force of the past and the legacy of their shared orphanhood. Then Frances decides to make a journey home to the goldfields to explore what lies hidden and unspoken in their lives, in the shadowy tunnels of the past.' (Publication summary)

1 Beautiful and Clumsy Gail Jones , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 8 June 2019; (p. 16)
1 Turnings and Over-turnings in Glebe Gail Jones , 2018 single work prose
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , February 2018;

'It often rains in Glebe. The suburb is surely wetter than any other, a soaked spongy place, subtropical and ever-damp, populated by giant, bombastic foliage. The blue shade of fig trees is a memory of water. In the gorgeously named Arcadia Road, banked by twenty Hills Weeping Figs, the downcast ripple of shadow can only be called subaquatic.' (Introduction)

2 7 y separately published work icon The Death of Noah Glass Gail Jones , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2018 11873096 2018 single work novel

'The art historian Noah Glass, having just returned from a trip to Sicily, is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect. The police are investigating.

'None of it makes any sense. Martin sets off to Palermo in search of answers about his father’s activities, while Evie moves into Noah’s apartment, waiting to learn where her life might take her. Retracing their father’s steps in their own way, neither of his children can see the path ahead.

'Gail Jones’s mesmerising new novel tells a story about parents and children, and explores the overlapping patterns that life makes. The Death of Noah Glass is about love and art, about grief and happiness, about memory and the mystery of time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Dark Places : The Movement of the Image (Thoughts on the Work of Veronica Brady) Gail Jones , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 22 2017; (p. 10-18)
1 Five Meditations on a Moonlit Night (I.M. Veronica Brady) Gail Jones , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , no. 16 2016; (p. 16-24)
1 Desperate, Marvellous Shuttling : White's Ambivalent Modernism Gail Jones , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White beyond the Grave : New Critical Perspectives 2015; (p. 155-162)
'Gail Jones...brings Theodor Adorno's characterisation of the post-war era, T.J. Clark's thoughts on modernist visual imagery and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project into dialogue with White's post-war novel, The Aunt's Story, providing a deeply insightful mediation on its infamous middle section, the 'Jardin Exotique', to reassess the controversial spiritualism of White's work. (Introduction 9)
1 The Missing Novels Debra Adelaide , Bernadette Brennan , Geraldine Brooks , Gregory Day , Ian Donaldson , Anna Funder , Andrea Goldsmith , Rodney Hall , Sonya Hartnett , Gail Jones , Susan Lever , Brian Matthews , Peter Rose , Susan Sheridan , Geordie Williamson , 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 374 2015; (p. 41-43)
'Early success is no guarantee of a book’s continued availability or circulation. Some major and/or once-fashionable authors recede from public consciousness, and in some cases go out of print. We invited some writers and critics to identity novelists who they feel should be better known.'
2 13 y separately published work icon A Guide to Berlin Gail Jones , North Sydney : Random House Australia , 2015 8588237 2015 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'A Guide to Berlin” is the name of a short story written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1925, when he was a young man of 26, living in Berlin.

'A group of six international travellers, two Italians, two Japanese, an American and an Australian, meet in empty apartments in Berlin to share stories and memories. Each is enthralled in some way to the work of Vladimir Nabokov, and each is finding their way in deep winter in a haunted city. A moment of devastating violence shatters the group, and changes the direction of everyone's story.

'Brave and brilliant, A Guide to Berlin traces the strength and fragility of our connections through biographies and secrets. ' (Publication summary)

1 Glasses and Speculations : On Hazzard's Transits Gail Jones , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Shirley Hazzard : New Critical Essays 2014; (p. 65-78)
1 Celebrating Our Far Western City of Contradictions Gail Jones , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 1-2 March 2014; (p. 31) The Age , 1 March 2014; (p. 31)

— Review of Perth David Whish-Wilson , 2013 single work prose
1 1 The Ocean Gail Jones , 2013 single work short story
— Appears in: A Country Too Far : Writings on Asylum Seekers 2013; (p. 103-109)
1 Books of the Year Patrick Allington , Judith Beveridge , Carmel Bird , Geoffrey Blainey , Alison Broinowski , Sophie Cunningham , Ian Donaldson , Gillian Dooley , Andrea Goldsmith , Kerryn Goldsworthy , Rodney Hall , Paul Hetherington , Gail Jones , Jacqueline Kent , John Kinsella , James Ley , Patrick McCaughey , Brian McFarlane , Michael Morley , Brenda Niall , John Rickard , John Tranter , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December 2011-January 2012 no. 337 2011; (p. 27-31)
Australian writers and reviewers each nominate their best books of 2011. Some of the books listed are by Australian writers.
1 My Favourite Novel : Swooning to Ondaatje's Roar Gail Jones , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 6-7 August 2011; (p. 18-19)
Jones describes Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion (1987) as her favourite novel.
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