A SYDNEY MORNING HERALD AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
'MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2021'
'A tour de force... I can't recommend this too highly'
Patrick Gale
'A potent meditation on the intensity of women's lives'
Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend
'I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable'
Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters
'Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed'
Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange
'An intimate, intensely brooding novel. Thomas gently questions the certainties of modern life that so many of us take for granted'
Guinevere Glasfurd, author of The Year Without Summer
'Read it as soon as you possibly can'
Emily Bitto, author of The Strays
The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.
The house lights lower.
The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness.
As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.
Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.
As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2021'
'A tour de force... I can't recommend this too highly'
Patrick Gale
'A potent meditation on the intensity of women's lives'
Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend
'I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable'
Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters
'Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed'
Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange
'An intimate, intensely brooding novel. Thomas gently questions the certainties of modern life that so many of us take for granted'
Guinevere Glasfurd, author of The Year Without Summer
'Read it as soon as you possibly can'
Emily Bitto, author of The Strays
The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.
The house lights lower.
The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness.
As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.
Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.
As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"This extraordinary novel contains multitudes. Grounded in the inner lives of three women, it expands to encompass so much that is of fundamental importance to our times, and indeed to the human condition itself. Profound, funny, full of empathy and oh-so-smart, this is a work of art in the truest sense. Read it as soon as you possibly can." - Emily Bitto
"Restrained and adventurous at once, The Performance is a cool, potent meditation on the private intensity of women's lives. An enigmatic, elegant and assured novel that explores the power of art in revealing us to ourselves." - Charlotte Wood
"Restrained and adventurous at once, The Performance is a cool, potent meditation on the private intensity of women's lives. An enigmatic, elegant and assured novel that explores the power of art in revealing us to ourselves." - Charlotte Wood
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Used availability for Claire Thomas's The Performance