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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Our Shadows is a story about three generations of family living in Kalgoorlie, where gold was discovered in 1893 by an Irish-born prospector named Paddy Hannan, whose own history weaves in and out of this beguiling novel.
'Nell and Frances are sisters who are close enough in age to be mistaken for twins. Raised by their grandparents, they now live in Sydney. Each in her own way struggles with the loss of their parents.
'Little by little the sisters grow to understand the imaginative force of the past and the legacy of their shared orphanhood. Then Frances decides to make a journey home to the goldfields to explore what lies hidden and unspoken in their lives, in the shadowy tunnels of the past.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Epigraph :
'Strange how things in the offing, once they're sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what's come upon is manifest
Only in light of what has been gone through.'
Seamus Heaney ('Squarings xlviii')
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Gail Jones, Our Shadows
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 24-30 October 2020;
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel'In the winter of 1893, the Irish prospector Paddy Hannan and two compatriots noted the presence of gold in the place that would become known as Kalgoorlie. The diggings were soon swarmed, and a bustling mining town grew up in the years that followed, the magnetic pull of precious metal overcoming the remoteness of the Western Australian site, the aridity of its climate, the inherent dangers of the work.' (Introduction)
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Our Shadows by Gail Jones Review – A Quiet Rejection of Conformity in the Kalgoorlie Mines
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 23 October 2020;
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel'Three generations of a gold-mining family search for meaning in a carefully rendered ninth novel from last year’s Prime Minister’s literary award-winner.'
-
Things Known and Foreknown : A Virtuoso Performance from Gail Jones
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 425 2020; (p. 22-23)
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel'Gail Jones’s new novel, Our Shadows, provides readers with another virtuoso performance, showing a writer fully in control of her medium. It is a poetic and beautifully crafted evocation of shadowy pasts whose traumatic effects (in the world and in individual lives) stretch deep into the present and the future.'
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A Tale Intimate and Epic in Scale
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3 October 2020; (p. 15)
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel
-
A Tale Intimate and Epic in Scale
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3 October 2020; (p. 15)
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel -
Things Known and Foreknown : A Virtuoso Performance from Gail Jones
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 425 2020; (p. 22-23)
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel'Gail Jones’s new novel, Our Shadows, provides readers with another virtuoso performance, showing a writer fully in control of her medium. It is a poetic and beautifully crafted evocation of shadowy pasts whose traumatic effects (in the world and in individual lives) stretch deep into the present and the future.'
-
Our Shadows by Gail Jones Review – A Quiet Rejection of Conformity in the Kalgoorlie Mines
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 23 October 2020;
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel'Three generations of a gold-mining family search for meaning in a carefully rendered ninth novel from last year’s Prime Minister’s literary award-winner.'
-
Gail Jones, Our Shadows
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 24-30 October 2020;
— Review of Our Shadows 2020 single work novel'In the winter of 1893, the Irish prospector Paddy Hannan and two compatriots noted the presence of gold in the place that would become known as Kalgoorlie. The diggings were soon swarmed, and a bustling mining town grew up in the years that followed, the magnetic pull of precious metal overcoming the remoteness of the Western Australian site, the aridity of its climate, the inherent dangers of the work.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2021 shortlisted Voss Literary Prize
- 2021 shortlisted HNSA Historical Novel Prize — Adult
- 2021 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2021 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
- Sydney, New South Wales,
- Kalgoorlie, Goldfields area, Southeast Western Australia, Western Australia,
