The Toucher
McPhee Gribble, $29.95 hb, 300 pp, 0869142771
Fiction
The toucher
by Elaine Lindsay •
... the role of the woman writer is always doubly subversive in a predominantly male ethos. She thinks subversively by nature and experience, and she writes from that other country of spirit and physicality, which still remains, for us, largely uncharted. Dorothy Hewett, ‘The Garden and the City’, in Westerly 4, 1982
The publicity for Dorothy Hewett’s first novel in thirty-four years bills The Toucher as ‘a story of sexual intrigue, memory and death’. Maybe, but there’s also a lot more going on, as Hewett subverts conventional ideas of romance, ageing, morality, fiction and autobiography, and the end to which we come.
Continue reading for only $10 per month. Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review. Already a subscriber? Sign in. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us.