Book Description
“Theory & Practice is a thrillingly original hybrid work that seeks truthful answers to the most difficult questions of the day—questions about the nature of love, art, and desire, about the thorny cultural legacy of colonialism and the unappeasable human yearning for connection.” —Sigrid Nunez, author of The Vulnerables
A new novel of startling intelligence from prizewinning Australian author Michelle de Kretser, following a writer looking back on her young adulthood and grappling with what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art
It’s 1986, and “beautiful, radical ideas” are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a “deconstructed relationship.” They become lovers, and the narrator’s feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf’s diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? Michelle de Kretser’s new novel offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in the gap between our values and our lives.
Praise For This Book
"This appears to be De Kretser’s impetus: to tread where Woolf refrained, to push the margins of what a novel can look and feel like. It also asks questions of the act of reading itself . . . This is a book of intrusions: of unacknowledged inequalities, of flawed maternal figures, of raw human emotions (our 'morbid symptoms') . . . So much is condensed into its brief length, not least of which is a probing interrogation of novels and why we write them . . . As De Kretser accomplishes in Theory & Practice, they allow witness of life’s 'messy, human truth,' told without shame." —Jack Calill, The Guardian"Electric and complex. Theory & Practice takes seriously what it means to love: not only people, but ideas too. [De Kretser] shows how love’s ugliest emotions—jealousy, shame, disappointment, betrayal—are often embedded alongside the tricky thinking that breaks us down and shapes us, allowing us to glimpse other stories beneath the ones we inherit." —Ruth McHugh-Dillon, Meanjin
"Excellent, genre-defying . . . De Kretser captures a time when, for her protagonist, adult life is just beginning, open and chaotic, filled with possibility. It’s witty and erudite on life and art and more than achieves the author’s aim of 'a novel that reads like memoir, like truth'." —Alice O'Keeffe, The Bookseller
"Thoughtful and pensive, Theory & Practice is an intimate novel about love, racial identity, and motherhood." —Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"De Kretser continues to shapeshift formally with each novel, but offers her characteristic blend of moral clarity, bite, and sumptuous style. A ferociously intelligent novel from a writer at the height of her powers." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Sharp-witted and mesmerizing . . . The narrator’s clever political insights and beautiful depictions of art and literature offer readers a view into a captivating mind. De Kretser is at the top of her game." —Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)
“Theory & Practice blazes with intelligence, passion and wit. I devoured it, greedily, in a single glorious sitting.” —Sarah Waters, author of The Paying Guests
"Michelle de Kretser is a genius—one of the best writers working today. She is startlingly, uncannily good at naming and facing what is most difficult and precious about our lives. Theory & Practice is a wonder, a brilliant book that reinvents itself again and again, stretching the boundaries of the novel to show the ways in which ideas and ideals are folded into our days, as well as the times when our choices fail to meet them. There’s no writer I’d rather read." —V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Women's Prize for Fiction and Carol Shields Prize award-winning Brotherless Night
"In the midst of a late coming-of-age plot effervescent with romantic and intellectual misadventure, de Kretser considers memory—how we enshrine our cultural heroes and how we tell ourselves the stories of our own lives—with absolute rigor and perfect clarity. Structurally innovative and totally absorbing, this is a book that enlivens the reader to every kind of possibility. I savored every word." —Jennifer Croft, author of The Extinction of Irena Rey
"Theory & Practice is a thrillingly original hybrid work that seeks truthful answers to the most difficult questions of the day—questions about the nature of love, art, and desire, about the thorny legacy of colonialism and the unappeasable human yearning for connection." —Sigrid Nunez, author of The Vulnerables
“Michelle de Krestser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.” —Neel Mukherjee, author of Choice and A State of Freedom
"A gem of a book, suffused with the fervent atmosphere of student life, which asks the reader to look again—at literary history, at the idea of the novel, at ourselves." —Francesca Wade, author of Square Haunting
