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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This is Albion Gidley Singer at the pen, a man with a weakness for a good fact. The first fact is always the hardest: you have to begin somewhere, and such is the nature of this intractable universe that the only thing you can start with is yourself.
'Dark Places, a companion novel to Lilian’s Story, is the tale of a man with a comically grand exterior who believes he has the right, and the duty, to conquer the mocking flesh of any woman. Even his own daughter.' (Publication summary)
Contents
- Introduction, essay
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording, large print.
Works about this Work
-
Cannibalism and Colonialism : Lilian's Story and (White) Women's Belonging
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014;'In 1985, when Kate Grenville’s novel about a fat, unlovely bag lady appeared on the Australian literary landscape, Lilian’s Story was celebrated as a feminist and postcolonial text. By locating Lilian as ex-centric to the nation, to inhabit the abjected zones of the colony—the bush, the asylum, the streets of post-Federation Sydney—Grenville is commonly read as a feminist writer intervening into the gender politics that shaped Australia. Feminists celebrate the ways in which she carves out discursive spaces for women who have existed largely in the interstices between public memory and official history. Postcolonial critical interpretations of Lilian being ‘colonised’ by her father, provoked by the rape narrative, have tended to reproduce the postcolonial trope of Australia’s shift from a colonial relationship to a national structure. Such readings largely neglect the colonial violence of Australian patriarchy, and the skewed gender norms that result when a host culture is transplanted to an imperial outpost. Taking up the colonial metaphor structuring the relationship between Lilian and her father, I read Lilian’s ‘madness’ as a response to discourses of ‘race’ and gender that circulate in the colonial Imaginary to position women as the site for racial anxiety about colonial ‘dirt’, contamination and disorder. While Lilian approaches the rebellious female grotesque celebrated in postcolonial feminist theorising, her obese body also signifies the devouring nature of colonialism. This paper engages with the white politics of women’s ‘belonging’ inscribed in Lilian’s Story to disinter the schizoid nature of white women’s relationship to colonial patriarchy.' (Publication abstract)
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Books That Changed Me...Ben Strout
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 24 March 2013; (p. 12) -
[Review] Dark Places
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Lifted Brow , no. 14 2012; (p. 24)
— Review of Dark Places 1994 single work novel -
Books of the Week
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Mail , 29 April 2012; (p. 37)
— Review of Dark Places 1994 single work novel ; Am I Black Enough for You? 2012 single work autobiography -
Katherine Howell : The Books that Changed Me
2012
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 18 March 2012; (p. 7)
-
Second Look
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 14 August 2005; (p. 18)
— Review of Dark Places 1994 single work novel -
Review
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 18 April 2008; (p. 40)
— Review of The Changeling 2008 single work novel ; Hard Jacka 2007 single work biography ; Dark Places 1994 single work novel -
Australian Horror
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: Sirius , September no. 10 1995; (p. 47-53)
— Review of The Empty Beach 1983 single work novel ; A Place to Fear 1994 single work novel ; Darkland 1995 single work novel ; Ghost Beyond Earth 1993 single work novel ; Circle of Light 1990 single work novel ; Ghost Beyond Earth 1993 single work novel ; Revenge of the Revenant 1994 single work novel ; Jenny's Dance 1989 single work novel ; Dark Places 1994 single work novel ; The Mischief Makers 1993 single work novel ; The House That Jack Built 1993 single work novel -
Books Read Recently
1996
single work
review
— Appears in: Scratch Pad 18 , July 1996; (p. 4-6)
— Review of Distress 1995 single work novel ; The Memory Cathedral : A Secret History of Leonardo da Vinci 1995 single work novel ; Permutation City 1994 single work novel ; Eccentrics : The Scientific Investigation 1988 single work essay ; Old School Tie 1994 single work novel ; Lilian's Story 1985 single work novel ; Dark Places 1994 single work novel -
Books of the Week
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Mail , 29 April 2012; (p. 37)
— Review of Dark Places 1994 single work novel ; Am I Black Enough for You? 2012 single work autobiography -
Gao bie ji jin nu quan zhu yi-Ping Kaite Gelunweier de xioa shuo Hei an zhi di yu Wan mei zhu yi
Reflection of Kate Grenville's Radical Feminism : An Interpretation of Dark Places and The Idea of Perfection;
告别激进女权主义——评凯特·格伦维尔的小说《黑暗之地》与《完美主义》
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Foreign Literature Studies , August vol. 28 no. 120 2006; (p. 103-107)'凯特·格伦维尔是在激进女权运动影响下成长起来的女作家,其早期作品认同激进女权主义关于男权为女性一切苦难之源的思想,从家庭、社会和文化三个方面对于男权进行了抨击和批判.而80年代后期,格伦维尔的创作表现出在性别问题上告别激进、寻求反思与妥协的价值取向.她的小说<黑暗之地>通过变换叙述视角表达了对于男性的同情和理解,小说<完美主义>则对激进女权主义所暗含的完美主义思维方式进行了批判.'
Source: CAOD.
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How To Occupy the Mind of a Monster
2008
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 26-27 April 2008; (p. 8-9) -
Theorising the Madwoman : Fictocritical Incursions - A Performance
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010; '‘Theorising the madwoman : fictocritical incursions - a performance’ is an intervention into the politics of naming and writing about women’s madness in literature. Using fictocritical tactics, this article stages a dialogue between the madwoman and the critic to make visible ‘the fiction of the disembodied scholar’ deployed in textual criticism. Sometimes speaking as the madwoman, sometimes as the feminist critic, I aim to destabilise the voice of the objective scholar, while continuing to lay some claim to it. Polyvocal in arrangement, discordant and offbeat in its strategies, and fictocritical in its tactics and stylistics, this article is an incursion into, rather than an interpretation of, women’s madness. Using a hybrid of fictional strategies, feminist scholarship, and personal experience, I allow the madwoman to interrupt, challenge and resist the interpretive project, by careening into it. Provisional, disorderly and subversive, fictocriticism offers a way of thinking through, rather than thinking about women’s madness. It seems particularly suited to an investigation of the madwoman in literature, as it dramatises the very disorder and instability the madwoman is said to embody.' (Author's abstract) -
Interview with Kate Grenville on Dark Places
Michelle Weisz
,
Anna Bang
,
1999
single work
interview
— Appears in: Southerly , Spring-Summer vol. 59 no. 3-4 1999; (p. 180-184) -
Katherine Howell : The Books that Changed Me
2012
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 18 March 2012; (p. 7)
Awards
- 1995 winner National Library of Australia National Audio Book-of-the-Year Award The TDK Australian Audio Book Awards — TDK Australian Audio Book Awards — Overall Winner and Unabridged Fiction Category
- 1995 winner The TDK Australian Audio Book Awards — Overall Winner and Unabridged Fiction
- 1995 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Fiction
- 1995 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- Sydney, New South Wales,