Girl with a Monkey

Girl with a Monkey
First edition
AuthorThea Astley
LanguageEnglish
GenreFiction
PublisherAngus and Robertson
Publication date
1958
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint
Pages144pp
Preceded by- 
Followed byA Descant for Gossips 

Girl with a Monkey (1958) is a novel by Australian author Thea Astley.[1]

Plot summary

The novel centres around one day in the life of a young schoolteacher in a small Queensland town. She has recently had a relationship with a local road worker, and this day is her last in the town as she prepares to transfer south to escape what appears to be a threatening situation.

Critical reception

In a survey of the author's works The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature noted that: "For the self-conscious, hyperperceptive individuals on whom she concentrates, life is necessarily isolated, an unequal, doomed, tragi-comic struggle for identity and integrity. From Elsie Ford in Girl with a Monkey to Paul Vesper of The Acolyte, to Belle of Reaching Tin River, she develops related but increasingly complex studies of desperate attempts to preserve the self in the face of disintegration."[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Austlit - Girl with a Monkey by Thea Astley". Austlit. Retrieved 12 July 2023.
  2. ^ The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edition, p45