AustLit

'In this work of exemplary and extensive scholarship, Tanya Dalziell enters into a kind of conversation, one between herself, as a responsive and knowledgeable guide to Gail Jones’s writing and thinking, and the texts themselves. Dalziell’s discussion is based on comprehensive reference to all seven (to date) of the novels, and to several of the stories from Jones’s two collections of short fiction. There are also numerous references to many of the essays that are an important part of Jones’s writing. Dalziell conveys her intimate knowledge of all this work, as she explicates what is a very broad field of writing, recognising Jones’s achievement in those several genres. In addition, Word, Image, Ethics underlines the substantive and coherent nature of Jones’s writing, which returns in each of its modes to one or more of the ideas that inform that work. A recurrent example is an interest in the complex nature of time in its different manifestations.' (Introduction)