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'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication: For my brothers, Peter and Kevin Jones.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille and sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Camera, Colony, Künstlerroman : Photography in Three Australian Novels
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 42 no. 1 2018; (p. 116-130) -
Sea Travel and Femininity in Gail Jones's Sixty Lights : The Female Global Citizen
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Partial Answers : Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas , January vol. 16 no. 1 2018; (p. 109-124)'Lucy Strange, the protagonist of Gail Jones' Sixty Lights (2004), can be seen as an early example of a global citizen. Travelling between the periphery and the center of the British Empire, Lucy repeatedly makes sea-journeys that last for months—a kind of journey that no longer exists in today's world. Although this travelling helps shape her identity, it also makes her incapable of calling any one location her home. This article discusses the portrayal of Lucy as a modern 19th-century woman who is simultaneously a 21st century, neo-Victorian creation. It analyzes the links between femininity and voyages in the novel. Lucy's travels serve to depict the movement of women and mothers across the sea as an inherent part of globalization, writing them into what was often seen as a development led by male adventurers and businessmen. Jones presents Lucy as a young woman at the edge of modernity. Nevertheless, Lucy's lack of rootedness also questions whether travelling requires different—more modern—constructions of female identity.' (Publication abstract)
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Paratactic Stammers : Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones
2016
single work
essay
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 1 2016;'Norman Saadi Nikro’s essay, ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ sets out to explore how Jones’ ‘sense of fascination and wonder with the technology and culture of modernism informs the phenomenology and tenor of her novelistic style, especially the characters that emerge through the wave lengths of this style.’ Addressing himself to Jones’ literary fiction published to date, Nikro seeks to ‘track the duration in her novels whereby memory, history and story are experienced by her characters as something like intersections, intervals nor spacings, taut and tense folds or pleats in which time is riven by “a strange accession to memory and speech,” as the character Perdita comes to learn in Jones’s Sorry (202).’ Drawing in part on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and on Gilles Deleuze’s ‘engagement with the work of Bergson,’ Nikro examines in Jones the ‘relational contiguity of parts whose variable movements and orientations to one another bring about a transfiguration of their subjective capacities (as in Perdita’s realisation of her stuttering as a relational dynamic).’ ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ offers a rich and original reading of Jones’ fiction, both sympathetic and critically rigorous. Echoing Jones’ own views on modernity, Nikro traces in her novels a poetics of modernity that inflects both the writing and the thematics of the work. ‘Jones’s prose style,’ he suggests, ‘what she calls “a kind of prose poetics’” (Royo Grasa 1), calls attention to the gaps and intervals by which the temporality of narration is not only possible, but rendered a vacant site for the stammer of an interruptive image or voice encompassing an alternative engagement of time and its graphic imprints.’ Like Kirkpatrick, Nikro too highlights the forceful way in which an Australian author develops a distinct narrative voice, in the case of Jones one informed by a constant intertwining of local and global aesthetic and political sensibilities.' (Editor's introduction)
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Memory : The Theatre of the Past
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 13 2014; (p. 156-163) -
From Innocent to Evil: The Representation of the Child in the Works of Gail Jones
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 126-147)
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Framed by Loss
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 14-15 August 2004; (p. 12)
— Review of Sixty Lights 2004 single work novel -
Humanity in Focus Through a Camera Lens
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 21 August 2004; (p. 4)
— Review of Sixty Lights 2004 single work novel -
Artistic Light into the Future
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 28 August 2004; (p. 7)
— Review of Sixty Lights 2004 single work novel -
Celluloid Path to Enlightenment
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 4-5 September 2004; (p. 10)
— Review of Sixty Lights 2004 single work novel -
Strange Things
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 264 2004; (p. 45)
— Review of Sixty Lights 2004 single work novel -
Writing in Light: Insights in a Flash
2004
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 August 2004; (p. 1a-2a) -
Reading Groups and Creative Writing Courses : The Year's Work in Fiction
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 49 no. 2004; (p. 164-175) -
Dark Downs Thriller Stands Tall on Short List
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 22 April 2005; (p. 3) -
Prize Fighters Booked for Crack at the Franklin
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 22 April 2005; (p. 3) -
Forgotten Novel Proves a Winner
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 21 May 2005; (p. 6)
Awards
- 2006 longlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- 2006 winner Festival Awards for Literature (SA) — Premier's Award for the Best Overall Published Work
- 2006 winner Festival Awards for Literature (SA) — Award for Fiction
- 2005 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
- 2005 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Fiction Prize
- Ballarat, Ballarat area, Ballarat - Bendigo area, Victoria,
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London,
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
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cIndia,cSouth Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
- 1800-1899