Cirrus@Austlit

'Reading Abbey Lay’s debut novel, I was beset by a case of déjà vu. The narrative follows protagonist Millie, a smart but insecure teenager who develops an obsession with her thespian classmate Olive. Their relationship is saturated in unease – there is always a sense that something important is not being said. At sleepovers they philosophise about sex, intimacy and self-knowledge, and at school they ignore each other. Eventually Olive ghosts Millie, and Millie cannot for the life of her work out why. She wraps herself in self-pity and refuses to see the obvious truth.' (Introduction)

'The protagonist of Gail Jones’s One Another accidentally leaves the manuscript of the book she is writing on a train. Helen is a PhD student from Tasmania who is living in Cambridge while she researches and writes a thesis on Joseph Conrad, the Ukrainian-born mariner and writer who eventually settled in England. Neither a conventional scholarly account of Conrad’s work nor a true biography, the manuscript slips away from Helen’s possession just as it slips from the moorings of conventional categories of form.' (Introduction)