Careful Archaeology single work   review  
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Careful Archaeology
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Sometimes when we read, and never quite when we expect it, there are encounters that feel like a recognition. They lodge within us: I have friends who call these burrs in the brain, or splinters – but to me they’ve never felt like foreign bodies, stuck on or stuck in the skin. They go deeper. They become a part of who we are. Living within me like this, I know, is a single image from The Grass Sister, the first of Gillian Mears’ books that I ever read. A snapshot: it’s from a small and deeply intimate scene between the protagonist Avis and her lover Lavinia; the pair are lying in bed and one of them – I think it is Avis, but can’t be sure – admires the soft and downy line of darker hair running down the other’s lower belly, beneath her navel. Snail trail, I sometimes hear this now, although when I first read the book, just over ten years ago, I had never heard that term. I’d never seen one on another woman (though not for lack of trying) and was strangely ashamed of my own – but for Avis, it is not only beautiful and individual but electric: erotically charged, terribly and irresistibly so.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 14 Feb 2022 08:57:36
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/brennan-leaping-into-waterfalls-gillian-mears/ Careful Archaeologysmall AustLit logo Sydney Review of Books
Review of:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X