'Sport in this country has never seen anything quite like it. Mid last year, Australia co-hosted the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The Matildas’ memorable run to a fourth-place finish captivated the nation – from Sam Kerr’s calf to that Cortnee Vine penalty. Attendance and television records were broken and broken again. For a month, women’s sport occupied the national consciousness in a way it never had before.' (Introduction)
'“Who will write the history of tears?” The narrator of Michelle de Kretser’s seventh novel returns to this question from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse (1977). Named once fleetingly, she is a writer, glancing back to growing up in Sri Lanka before her family migrated to Sydney, then reflecting on living in Melbourne to write a thesis on Virginia Woolf. Though her Sydney boyfriend has betrayed her, desire remains as central to her attention as the question of what a novel can do.' (Introduction)
