Our Shadows
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Description
Shortlisted, Fiction, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, 2021
Shortlisted, Voss Literary Prize, 2021
Shortlisted, ARA Historical Novel Prize, 2021
Longlisted, Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2021
Our Shadows tells the story of three generations of family living in Kalgoorlie, where gold was discovered in 1893 by an Irish-born prospector named Paddy Hannan, whose own history weaves in and out of this beguiling novel.
Sisters Nell and Frances were raised by their grandparents and were once closely bound by reading and fantasy. Now they live in Sydney and are estranged. Each in her own way struggles with the loss of their parents.
Little by little the sisters grow to understand the imaginative force of the past and the legacy of their shared orphanhood. Then Frances decides to make a journey home to the goldfields to explore what lies hidden and unspoken in their lives, in the shadowy tunnels of the past.
'Jones’s writing frequently offers nuanced reflections on the cultural state of Australia as well as quiet revelations about the lives of her characters. Our Shadows is no exception…written like the wave that haunts its imaginative landscape, ebbing and flowing from past generations to the present and back again.’ – The Guardian
‘A narrative poised between celebration and condemnation, exploring the space between individual experience and broader societal forces—between fixed historical record and a future still in formation. It is a story that balances, delicately but with intense concentration and craft, the symbolic potency of mining with an account of ordinary lives shaped by daily intimacy with the industry.’ – Geordie Williamson, The Saturday Paper