''Bodies of Light'' (2021) is a novel by Australian writer

Jennifer Down Jennifer Down (born 1990) is an Australian novelist and short story writer. She won the 2022 Miles Franklin Award for her novel ''Bodies of Light''. Biography Down was in born 1990. She studied arts at Melbourne University before studying ...

. It won the 2022 Miles Franklin Award, and was shortlisted for the 2022

Voss Literary Prize The Voss Literary Prize is an annual award named in honour of historian Vivian Robert de Vaux Voss (1930–1963). It is awarded to the best novel published in the previous year and is managed and judged by the Australian University Heads of Engli ...

, the 2022 Stella Prize, the 2022

Barbara Jefferis Award The Barbara Jefferis Award is an Australian literary award prize. The award was created in 2007 after being endowed by John Hinde upon his death to commemorate his late wife, author Barbara Jefferis. It is funded by his $1 million bequest. Origi ...

, the 2022 Age Book of the Year Award, the 2022

Davitt Award The Davitt Awards are literary awards which are presented annually by the Sisters in Crime Australia association. The awards are named in honour of Ellen Davitt (1812–1879) who wrote Australia's first mystery novel, ''Force and Fraud'' in 186 ...

for Best Adult Crime Novel, and the 2022

Victorian Premier's Literary Award The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry. As of 2013, it is reportedly Australia's richest literary p ...

for Fiction.

Abstract

"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)

Critical reception

In ''The Guardian'' Declan Fry concludes: "''Bodies of Light'' is a remarkably empathic book, a bildungsroman in the mode of Jane Eyre or ''Of Human Bondage''. Its characters are credibly invested with hopes, convictions, dreams, and desires." Susan Midalia in the ''Australian Book Review'' notes that the book "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....''Bodies of Light'' is at its most thought-provoking and emotionally engaging when it pauses in the rush of events to represent the intensity of Maggie’s psychological and bodily experiences."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bodies of Light 2021 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works

Abstract

Critical reception

See also

References