The Natural Way of Things - Softcover

Wood, Charlotte

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1760291919 ISBN 13: 9781760291914

Publisher: Allen & Unwin, 2017

Synopsis

Winner of the Stella Prize
Winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award
Shortlisted Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for International Dublin Literary Award
Observer Books of the Year 2016

'Beautiful and savage - think Atwood in the outback.' Paula Hawkins, Observer

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of a desert. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girls, forced to wear strange uniforms, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious armed jailers and a 'nurse'.

Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. They pray for rescue - but when the food starts running out it becomes clear that the jailers have also become the jailed. The girls can only rescue themselves.

About this title

Review

Charlotte Wood's shocking feminist dystopia, sees 10 women, all of whom have been involved in sex scandals with powerful men, held in a remote prison in Australia. Beautiful and savage - think Atwood in the outback. Author: Paula Hawkins Source: Observer

This is not psychological fiction but a horror parable; a portrait not of people, but of tendencies. Seen as mythical archetypes, the characters are only too frighteningly real...The Natural Way of Things is chillingly dark and unfashionably didactic. But it's also compulsively readable, and bears its load of significance with effortless power. The fury of contemporary feminism may have found its masterpiece of horror. Source: Guardian

A haunting parable of contemporary misogyny...Ms Wood's writing is direct and spare, yet capable of bursting with unexpected beauty. Source: Economist

A heavy, traumatic yet thrilling read... The Natural Way of Things had me gripped from beginning to end... It strongly appealed to my feminist nature and had me questioning our social standpoints.... An eye-opener in true form. Source: Grazia

This is an extraordinary novel: inspired, powerful, at once coherent and dreamlike. Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Best Books of 2015

A confronting and blazing read... A novel to provoke thought, conversation, disgust, anger and concern, a work that will haunt the reader with its poetry and the stark truths buried within Wood's brilliant exploration of a toxic culture in extremis. Source: Weekend Australian

A virtuoso performance, plotted deftly through a minefield of potential traps, weighted with allegory yet swift and sure in its narrative advance. Author: Rosemary Sorensen Source: Sydney Review of Books

A dystopian fable, both gripping and lyrical. Source: The Saturday Age, Best Books of 2015

A moving, mesmerising and brilliantly topical interrogation of misogyny that demands to be read at a sitting. Source: Adelaide Advertiser

Bold, provocative, startling and insightful, The Natural Way of Things is what fiction should be. Source: The Newtown Review of Books

From the Author

Charlotte Wood is the author of five novels and two books of non-fiction. The Natural Way of Things won the Stella Prize, the Indie Book of the Year and Indie Novel of the Year. This and other books have been shortlisted for many prizes including the Miles Franklin, Christina Stead and Queensland Literary Awards. The Australian described her as 'one of our most original and provocative writers'. She lives in Sydney.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1760291919
• ISBN 13: 9781760291914
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320