Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
A DAILY MAIL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2023
LONGLISTED FOR BEST FICTION IN THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS AUSTRALIA 2024

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.

Publisher Review

A work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding . . . the writing sparkles with Grenville's gift for transcendently clear imagery * * Guardian * * Brings readers into intimate acquaintance with the lives of women in late 19th- and early 20th-century rural Australia . . . elevated by Grenville's crystalline prose * * Globe and Mail * * Praise for Kate Grenville: Beautifully written, insistently eloquent and expressive of connection . . . [a] stunning literary achievement * * Guardian * * Kate Grenville spins a delicately teasing novel about the inherent untrustworthiness of the official record . . . beautiful and subtle * * Financial Times * * Grenville cleverly uses Elizabeth's bland and pleasant missives home, showing that they were a carefully constructed fiction. The real Elizabeth - passionate, clever and endlessly resilient - is brilliantly conjured * * The Times * * Kate Grenville gives voice to this reticent woman, allowing her smart, sparky, shrewd heroine a chance "at last to speak" . . . eloquent [and] evocative * * Daily Mail * *