'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)
'Whereas much scholarship still associates migrant fiction in Australia with social or documentary realism, this chapter emphasizes its playful, iconoclastic, and experimental qualities. It questions the conventional long form as a closed, stable narration that relies on summation and style. Instead it turns to short fiction, examining writers such as Tom Cho, Nicholas Jose, and Melanie Cheng who operate as transnational, experimental, and decolonial forces in Australian writing.' (Publication abstract)
'The Australian writer Gail Jones excels at "transnational writing" and Sixty Lights is one prominent example. The novel explores the themes of home, travel and "intercultural fort\da" by highlighting the fluidity of identity. Lucy changes her "home" frequently only to showcase the difference of her identity, and her three journeys across the ocean construct her identity within the sameness. Hence Lucy carries out the practice of "intercultural fort\da," pursuing "the contact zone," which exemplifies "contradictory subject positions," "relationality," and "situationality." In this neo-Victorian novel, Lucy’s identity transcends space and time, dispelling the contradictions and anxieties in the construction of her cultural identity. She finally becomes a unique "global traveller" and a "woman of the future."' (Publication abstract)
