Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

‘Still and still moving’

Anna MacDonald’s painterly eye
by
January–February 2021, no. 428

A Jealous Tide by Anna MacDonald

Splice, $34.99 hb, 224 pp

‘Still and still moving’

Anna MacDonald’s painterly eye
by
January–February 2021, no. 428

Rivers seem to be something of a preoccupation for Melbourne writer Anna MacDonald. They feature prominently in her 2019 essay collection, Between the Word and the World, and are both setting and centrepiece to her first novel, A Jealous Tide.

For MacDonald, rivers – whether London’s Thames or her beloved Yarra – are so much more than a way to navigate a city. They are also an invitation to see: to look beyond the murky surface and sound out the depths; to see the world as it is rather than simply how it appears. To travel a river, she says, quoting German writer Esther Kinsky in Between the Word and the World, is to relinquish oneself to a ‘restless, transient land’; a border zone that conjures up ‘dislocation, confusion and unpredictability in a world that crave[s] order’. Far from being places of peace, rivers are dangerous territory where it is easy to become unmoored and lost.

Polly Simons reviews 'A Jealous Tide' by Anna MacDonald

A Jealous Tide

by Anna MacDonald

Splice, $34.99 hb, 224 pp

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.