image of person or book cover 5719621836377460155.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Sorry single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2007... 2007 Sorry
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

'In the remote outback of Western Australia during World War II, English anthropologist Nicholas Keene and his wife, Stella, raise a lonely child, Perdita. Her upbringing is far from ordinary: in a shack in the wilderness, with a distant father burying himself in books and an unstable mother whose knowledge of Shakespeare forms the backbone of the girl's limited education.

'Emotionally adrift, Perdita becomes friends with a deaf and mute boy, Billy, and an Aboriginal girl, Mary. Perdita and Mary come to call one another sister and to share a very special bond. They are content with life in this remote corner of the globe, until a terrible event lays waste to their lives.' (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Veronica Brady.

Affiliation Notes

  • Writing Disability in Australia:

    Type of disability Deafness and mutism.
    Type of character Secondary.
    Point of view First person.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Milsons Point, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Vintage Australia , 2007 .
      image of person or book cover 5719621836377460155.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 218p.
      ISBN: 1741669006, 9781741669008
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Europa Editions ,
      2008 .
      image of person or book cover 4645647801263467103.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 256p.p.
      ISBN: 9781933372556
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      2013 .
      image of person or book cover 5829524400888795103.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 224p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Imprint: Vintage Digital.

      ISBN: 9781448104802, 1448104807
    • North Sydney, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Random House Australia , 2014 .
      image of person or book cover 6495733160937917348.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      Note/s:
      • Imprint: RHA eBooks Adult

      ISBN: 9781742749877, 1742749879
Alternative title: Pardon : Roman
Language: French
    • Paris,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Mercure de France ,
      2008 .
      image of person or book cover 8462232618707864156.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 336p.
      ISBN: 9782715228290

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording; braille

Works about this Work

Resisting Fixation in Gail Jones’ Sorry and Five Bells Anthony Uhlmann , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Inner and Outer Worlds : Gail Jones' Fiction 2022;
White Apology and Apologia : Australian Novels of Reconciliation by Liliana Zavaglia Lukas Klik , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , April vol. 35 no. 1 2020;

'From at least the early 1990s, when the Hawke Labor Government introduced reconciliation legislation into the Australian parliament, the concept of reconciliation has attracted criticism from both the political left and right. While some have complained of it as a predominantly white undertaking, others have seen it as a threat to the unity of the Australian nation-state. Following the election of John Howard in 1996, reconciliation met fierce resistance from the Federal Government itself, with Howard rejecting the recommendations of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report and refusing to apologise to Indigenous Australians for their ongoing sufferings at the hands of British colonialism. This is the political climate that provides the backdrop for the five novels, all written between 2002 and 2007, which Liliana Zavaglia examines in White Apology and Apologia: Australian Novels of Reconciliation (2016). In her book, Zavaglia deliberately chooses to focus exclusively on works by Anglo-Australian writers to examine how whiteness operates in contemporary Australia. Though she conceives of her primary texts as characteristic of a liberal whiteness that ‘worked to counter [the] political attempts [by the Liberal government] to silence the Indigenous rights and reconciliation movements’ (1), she argues that they, at the same time, articulate the ‘double movement of apology and apologia’ (3) typical of whiteness in Australia. Etymologically, ‘apology’ and ‘apologia’ are cognates of the Greek and Latin apologia, respectively. Despite their common roots, however, they differ significantly in terms of meaning, for while the first implies remorse, the latter, a later borrowing of the Latin form, indicates defence and justification. By identifying moments of both apology and apologia, Zavaglia suggests, the novels she discusses reveal the ‘discourse of liberal postcolonial whiteness [to be] a riven and conflicted site, driven in a hopeful quest to heal its relations with the other, even as its normative traces continue in the legacy bequeathed to it by its colonial foundations’ (21). What then follows is an elaborate investigation of this divided and disrupted nature of Australian whiteness, as it manifests itself in contemporary Anglo-Australian fiction.' (Publication abstract)

“The Stolen Children” and the Unspeakable Repentance : Language as Metaphor in Gail Jones’s Sorry 不可言说的忏悔:“被偷走的孩子”与《抱歉》中语言的隐喻 Jie Huang , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Foreign Literature Review , vol. [2018] no. 4 2018; (p. 135-152)

'盖尔·琼斯的《抱歉》通过揭示澳大利亚一个白人移民家庭的创伤经历来折射历史遗留问题对现实生活的影响。"被偷走的孩子"是二十世纪初澳大利亚政府实行种族同化政策的产物,1997年《带他们回家》报告公布,引发了公众对该现象的深切反思并触发了一系列"被偷走的孩子叙述"的面世。由于身份的限制,该类叙述一向是具有土著血统的作家的专属领域。作为白人女作家,琼斯大胆闯入这一禁区,她的小说反映了作为曾是加害者的白人的后裔对历史的反思以及对民族和解的期盼,同时也透露出多元文化主义指引下的澳大利亚社会对于文化融合的不断思索'

Source: CAOD.

The “Petit Récit” in Gail Jones’ Sorry 'Little Narrative' in Sorry by Gail Jones; (盖尔·琼斯《抱歉》中的后现代“小叙事 Wang Labao , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: 国外文学 , vol. [2018] no. 3 2018; (p. 124-134, 160)

'Gail Jones’ Sorry has since its publication been greeted with critical controversies. The novel has been read by some as a national allegory and a grand public narrative. This essay argues that Sorry attempts to tell a small story or a "petit récit". As a "petit récit", Sorry constructs a narrative( 1) about the fear of a white female child,( 2) that embodies a compromised counterdiscourse,and( 3) that uses a literary device that Jones calls "poetic indirection". As a postmodern novel,Sorry offers a kind of communication based on an understanding of and care for the other.'

Source: CAOD.

Looking for Othello’s Pearl in Gail Jones’s Sorry (2007) : Symbolic and Intertextual Questioning of the Notion of “settler Envy” Pilar Royo Grasa , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 54 no. 2 2018; (p. 200-213)

'The turn of the century has witnessed a proliferation of the publication of the so-called “sorry novels”, “fictions of reconciliation” and “saying sorry texts” in the Australian literary context. In contrast to the arguments which define these texts as plausible examples of “settler envy”, this article highlights their dissenting and reconciling power in Gail Jones’s Sorry  by offering an in-depth analysis and discussion of the meaning and function of the intertextual allusions to Shakespeare’s Othello and the use of symbols in the novel.' (Introduction)

Peace without Atonement Diane Stubbings , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 5 May 2007; (p. 12)

— Review of Sorry Gail Jones , 2007 single work novel
Poetry's Vision Fills a Chaotic Void James Ley , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 5-6 May 2007; (p. 32-33)

— Review of Sorry Gail Jones , 2007 single work novel
Tricky Bits Michelle Griffin , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 291 2007; (p. 10-11)

— Review of Sorry Gail Jones , 2007 single work novel
The Hardest Word Katharine England , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 19 May 2007; (p. 10)

— Review of Sorry Gail Jones , 2007 single work novel
Poor Excuse for Art Kathy Hunt , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 June 2007; (p. 13)

— Review of Sorry Gail Jones , 2007 single work novel
Faith in a Sorry Life Jane Cornwell , 2007 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 June 2007; (p. 12)
How We Read this Year : Australian Fiction Diane Stubbings , 2007 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 15 December 2007; (p. 11)
Literary highlights in Australian fiction for 2007 . The author gives her impressions of these works.
WA Writer Has Eyes on Franklin for Third Time Rod Moran , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 18 April 2008; (p. 7)
Names West Australian authors shortlisted for 2008 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Miles Ahead of the Rest Mark Naglazas , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 7 June 2008; (p. 26-27)
Prize Writers Jane Sullivan , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 14 June 2008; (p. 28-29)
'Jane Sullivan assesses the field in Australia's most significant literary award.' (Editor's abstract)
Last amended 13 Jul 2021 12:27:31
X