DAILY MAIL
‘A master storyteller.’
AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS REVIEW
‘Chris Womersley cements his place as one of Australia’s finest writers in this taut gothic suspense story.’
THE BIG ISSUE
‘Poetic and original.’
THE MONTHLY
‘Chris Womersley knows how to shine light into the darkest corners of rural Australia.’
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
‘Haunting and beautiful.’
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
‘A nightmare labyrinth where superstition rules and where it seems the Devil calls the tune.’
THE AUSTRALIAN
‘This grim but spellbinding book is a danse macabre to the tune of Womersley’s incantatory prose . . . Worth reading for the writing alone.’
KIRKUS REVIEWS
‘A harrowing adventure and an enchanted exploration of the seductive worlds of faith, hope, love, lust and longing.’
THE ADVERTISER
‘A merciless read, taking you by the throat and not letting go for a minute.’
AUSTRALIAN LITERARY REVIEW
‘So stark and pitiless that it’s hard to keep reading. But it’s harder to stop.’
GIDEON HAIGH
‘Chris Womersley, in plain and startling yet tender and lyrical prose, has constructed a moving narrative that opens up the wounds of war, laying bare the events that pre-date the conflict and reach forward into the collective memory . . . War is the big drama of human horror, but the basest acts of cruelty are also enacted in what passes for peacetime. That Womersley can marry these two extremes, and construct a narrative in which the reader is left with a burning sense of regret and tenderness, is a mark of his skill and of his fictional reach.’
AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW
‘The quiet whispering tone of this book will linger long after you’ve finished it.’
COURIER-MAIL
‘This unabashedly gothic tale possesses such luminous beauty and emotional acuity that it has already evoked praise as lavish, if not more so, as that which greeted The Low Road . . . Bereft strikes nary a false note as it maps out the haunting, ambiguous territory between the trauma of war and grief, memory and longing, in a story of injustice and revenge that haunts long after reading.’
CANBERRA TIMES
‘Somehow Chris Womersley peers deep into the suffering heart and sees beyond the pain that humans inflict on each other, to a place where dignity, loyalty and even affection might blossom. He writes with such compelling power it is barely possible to put the book down.’
DEBRA ADELAIDE
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations
mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s
imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe
actual conduct.
First published 2019 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Chris Womersley 2019
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders
for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been
overlooked should contact the publisher.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available
from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781760786205
Typeset by Post Pre-press Group
Love talking about books?
Find Pan Macmillan Australia online to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.
A Lovely and Terrible Thing Page 21