Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser

This oddly-structured tale starts with a novel abandoned for autofiction and ends, abruptly, with an expat anecdote. A writer looks back to her postgraduate thesis on Virginia Woolf at a Melbourne University, while living in pre-gentrification St Kilda of the 1980s. The story touches on themes of class and colonialism, guilty feminism, child sexual abuse and fraught daughter-mother relationships, while skewering the petty politics of academia. There is a lot going on in a slim book that won this year’s Stella prize. Michelle de Kretser writes believable characters with clarity and a beautifully fluid style, but the auto fiction element makes for uncomfortable reading at times.