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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Jennifer Down cements her status as a leading light of Australian literary fiction in this heart-rending and intimate saga of one woman's turbulent life
'So by the grace of a photograph that had inexplicably gone viral, Tony had found me. Or—he'd found Maggie.
'I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don't think it's so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing.
'A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she's reluctant to revisit- dark memories and unspoken trauma, bruised thighs and warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss.
'She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light?
'This epic novel from the two-time Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year is a masterwork of tragedy and heartbreak-the story of a life in full. Sublimely wrought in devastating detail, Bodies of Light confirms Jennifer Down as one of the writers defining her generation.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
y
At Home with Jennifer Down
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2021
23443253
2021
single work
interview
podcast
'Jennifer Down is a highly awarded writer, named a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year consecutively in 2017 and 2018. Her third long form work is 2021's Bodies of Light.
'Our Magic Hour, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her second book, Pulse Points, was the winner of the 2018 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2018 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was shortlisted for a 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Award.' (Production summary)
-
Books Roundup : The Psychic Tests, After the Tampa, Bodies of Light, In Moonland
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , October 2021;
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel ; In Moonland 2021 single work novel -
Fashioning the Self : Reinvention as Fact and Metaphor
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 436 2021; (p. 34)
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel'Australian novelist and short story writer Jennifer Down has been rightly acclaimed, with an impressive list of awards to her name, including the Jolley Prize in 2014. Her new novel, Bodies of Light, is both much more ambitious in scope than her first and an altogether more harrowing read. Spanning the years from 1975 to 2018, and traversing many different locations in Australia, New Zealand, and America, the novel confronts us with child sexual abuse, a suicide attempt, a series of fractured relationships, allegations of infanticide, recurring social alienation, and a serious drug addiction. But it is also, and mercifully, a story of a woman’s remarkable resilience, the possibility of human kindness, and the necessity of hope. Bodies of Light thus has affinities with the feminist Bildungsroman popularised in the 1960s and 1970s; a genre that championed a belief in productive self-fashioning by women in the face of systemic misogynistic oppression.' (Introduction)
-
Blank Space
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2021;
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel -
Bodies of Light, Jennifer Down
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 October 2021;
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel'“At night I lay in bed and counted the bodies I’d left behind … I pictured them all laid out in a paddock like human dominos. I had no way of knowing what happened to any of them.”' (Introduction)
-
Bodies of Light, Jennifer Down
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 October 2021;
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel'“At night I lay in bed and counted the bodies I’d left behind … I pictured them all laid out in a paddock like human dominos. I had no way of knowing what happened to any of them.”' (Introduction)
-
Blank Space
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2021;
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel -
Fashioning the Self : Reinvention as Fact and Metaphor
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 436 2021; (p. 34)
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel'Australian novelist and short story writer Jennifer Down has been rightly acclaimed, with an impressive list of awards to her name, including the Jolley Prize in 2014. Her new novel, Bodies of Light, is both much more ambitious in scope than her first and an altogether more harrowing read. Spanning the years from 1975 to 2018, and traversing many different locations in Australia, New Zealand, and America, the novel confronts us with child sexual abuse, a suicide attempt, a series of fractured relationships, allegations of infanticide, recurring social alienation, and a serious drug addiction. But it is also, and mercifully, a story of a woman’s remarkable resilience, the possibility of human kindness, and the necessity of hope. Bodies of Light thus has affinities with the feminist Bildungsroman popularised in the 1960s and 1970s; a genre that championed a belief in productive self-fashioning by women in the face of systemic misogynistic oppression.' (Introduction)
-
Books Roundup : The Psychic Tests, After the Tampa, Bodies of Light, In Moonland
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , October 2021;
— Review of Bodies of Light 2021 single work novel ; In Moonland 2021 single work novel -
y
At Home with Jennifer Down
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2021
23443253
2021
single work
interview
podcast
'Jennifer Down is a highly awarded writer, named a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year consecutively in 2017 and 2018. Her third long form work is 2021's Bodies of Light.
'Our Magic Hour, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her second book, Pulse Points, was the winner of the 2018 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2018 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was shortlisted for a 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Award.' (Production summary)