Michelle de Kretser
Author of The Hamilton Case
About the Author
Michelle de Kretser is an editor who lives in Melbourne, Australia. This is her first novel. (Publisher Provided) Michelle de Kretser was born on November 11, 1957 in Sri Lanka. She was educated at Methodist College, Colombo,[2] and in Melbourne and Paris. She worked as an editor for travel guides show more company Lonely Planet, and while on a sabbatical in 1999, wrote and published her first novel, The Rose Grower. Her second novel, published in 2003, The Hamilton Case was winner of the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Encore Award (UK) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific). Her third novel, The Lost Dog, was published in 2007. It was one of 13 books on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for fiction. From 1989 to 1992 she was a founding editor of the Australian Women's Book Review. Her fourth novel, Questions of Travel, won several awards, including the 2013 Miles Franklin Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal), and the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards for fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2014 Dublin Impac Literary Award. She won the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel The Life to Come In 2015 her title, Springtime, made the shortlist for the Australian Book Designers Association Award. She will also be taking part in the winter reading series, Writers on Mondays when she visits Victoria University in September 2015. She is the author of The Life to Come, published in September 2017. (Publisher Provided) show less
Image credit: Courtesy of Allen and Unwin
Works by Michelle de Kretser
Associated Works
Many Roads Through Paradise: An Anthology Of Sri Lankan Literature (translation) (2014) — Contributor — 7 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- de Kretser, Michelle
- Birthdate
- 1957-11-11
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Australia
Sri Lanka (birth) - Birthplace
- Sri Lanka
- Places of residence
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Paris, France - Education
- Methodist College, Colombo, Ceylon
University of Melbourne - Occupations
- editor
novelist
Members
Discussions
ANZAC Author Reading Challenge- March 2015- Michelle De Krester and Elizabeth Knox in 75 Books Challenge for 2015 (March 2015)
Discussion: The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser (NO SPOILERS) in Orange January/July (February 2011)
Reviews
Lists
GeoCAT 2016 (1)
Booker Prize (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 1,828
- Popularity
- #14,076
- Rating
- 3.4
- Reviews
- 73
- ISBNs
- 119
- Languages
- 5
- Favorited
- 3
In the first, Lili, a 20 something Australian whose family had emigrated to Australia when she was a teenager, is now working a temporary teaching job in the south of France. She befriends an English artist, Mina, and several other ex-pats, and they do the sorts of things 20-somethings do, somewhat oblivious of consequences and of how their actions might be affecting others. Nothing serious though. Along the way Lili occasionally observes discrimination against North African immigrants. This whole story just didn't interest me.
In the second story, we are in near future dystopian Australia with another Asian emigrant family, father Lyle, mother Chanel (assumed names), their two kids, and Lyle's mother Ivy. They do everything they can to fit in, including gettin a pet dog and playing the popular on-line game Whack-a-Muslim. There was some very clever world-building here, and the dystopian aspects were extremely plausible. Obviously, a big theme is the fear of immigrants, but there is also an ageism theme going with assisted suicide being encouraged for older people (Ivy). As a stand alone this would have been a competent novella.
As I said, I can't see how these go together.
ETA: Amazon blurb says the "scary monsters' referred to by the title are racism, misogyny, and ageism. And that one of the stories is meant to refer to/represent the past, the other the future, and that you can read them in any order. Enlightened? Not me.
2 stars… (more)