“As a child I’d often heard, ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil.’ When the truth was told, someone had to be shamed – usually the teller of the truth. It was time, I told myself, to stop fearing shame.”
“Who will write the history of tears?”
Another Booker prediction comes from Australia – Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser (Catapult 2025). A slim little thing, Theory & Practice has that Booker smell as it follows a writer looking back to her time as a graduate student studying Virginia Woolf. Undoubtedly drawing comparison between herself and the famed author, our first-person narrator (who remains unnamed for most of the novel) has her world upended a bit by lessons on theory, discoveries in Woolf’s writing, and her own life experiences.
This was an interesting read on the heels of Our Evenings – both are about writers reflecting on their lives, both are in academia and struggling with expectations while also questioning methods, and both are “others” – David Winn has a Burmese father and Cindy has Sri Lankan parents.
It also proved an interesting read for someone who also had graduate studies. My focus was post colonialism and “writing back” – concepts our narrator grapples with in her scholarship but also in her existence. While I didn’t study Woolf, my focus on Nadine Gordimer and my scholarship into theory was eerily similar. (While I did complete my thesis and degree, I didn’t become a famous author or scholar.)
Theory & Practice is a coming-of age story of post-colonialism and feminism that hides a mirror. And it’s a masterful work that can reflect the reader back so precisely.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 