Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Jolts and Dislocation : Amanda Lohrey’s Bravura New Novel
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'Transformation is one thing. Conversion is another. With its Latin roots con (with or together) and vertere (to turn or bend), conversion is haunted by a sense of coercion, the imposition of one will over another. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, conversion comes in the form of Clarissa Dalloway’s daughter’s evangelistic tutor, Doris Kilman, the violence of colonialism, and brutish attempts by psychologist Sir William Bradshaw to instil ‘a sense of proportion’ into his vulnerable patients. Sir William gets what he wants. He ‘shuts people up’ under the auspices of ‘the twin goddesses of conversion and proportion’. Converting, for Woolf, means ‘to override opposition’.' (Introduction)          

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 459 November 2023 27124925 2023 periodical issue

    'As spring slowly turns to summer, the November issue of ABR addresses questions of memoir, biography, and autofiction. Catriona Menzies-Pike engages with Richard Flanagan’s new hybrid work Question 7 while Zora Simic assesses Naomi Klein’s journey into the ‘mirror world’ in Doppelganger and Marilyn Lake reviews Graeme Davison’s ‘uncommonly good family history’. Also, Susan Sheridan reviews a new literary biography of Dorothea Mackellar and Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews Catharine Lumby’s biography of Frank Moorhouse. Memoirist Shannon Burns reviews Christos Tsiolkas’s tangy new novel The In-Between, Felicity Plunkett looks at Amanda Lohrey’s The Conversion, and Jelena Dinić pays tribute to Charles Simic.' (Publication summary)

    2023
    pg. 27
Last amended 8 Nov 2023 09:47:54
27 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2023/995-november-2023-no-459/11367-felicity-plunkett-reviews-the-conversion-by-amanda-lohrey Jolts and Dislocation : Amanda Lohrey’s Bravura New Novelsmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
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