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Theory & Practice
With echoes of Shirley Hazzard and Virginia Woolf, a new novel of startling intelligence from prize–winning author Michelle de Kretser, following a woman looking back on her young adulthood, and grappling with the collision of her emotions and her values
In the late 1980s, the narrator of Theory & Practice—a first generation immigrant from Sri Lanka who moved to Sydney in her childhood—sets up a life in Melbourne for graduate school. Jilted by a lover who cheats on her with another self-described "feminist," she is thrown into deeper confusion about her identity and the people around her.
The narrator begins to fall for a man named Kit, who is in a “deconstructed relationship� with a woman named Olivia. She struggles to square her feminism against her jealousy toward Olivia—and her anti-colonialism against her feelings about Virginia Woolf, whose work she is called to despite her racism.
What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? In Theory & Practice, Michelle de Kretser offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in this gap. Peopled with brilliantly drawn characters, the novel also stitches together fiction and essay, taking up Woolf’s quest for adventurous literary form.
In the late 1980s, the narrator of Theory & Practice—a first generation immigrant from Sri Lanka who moved to Sydney in her childhood—sets up a life in Melbourne for graduate school. Jilted by a lover who cheats on her with another self-described "feminist," she is thrown into deeper confusion about her identity and the people around her.
The narrator begins to fall for a man named Kit, who is in a “deconstructed relationship� with a woman named Olivia. She struggles to square her feminism against her jealousy toward Olivia—and her anti-colonialism against her feelings about Virginia Woolf, whose work she is called to despite her racism.
What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? In Theory & Practice, Michelle de Kretser offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in this gap. Peopled with brilliantly drawn characters, the novel also stitches together fiction and essay, taking up Woolf’s quest for adventurous literary form.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2024
158 people are currently reading
6,425 people want to read
About the author
Michelle de Kretser
15books272followersMichelle de Kretser is an Australian novelist who was born in Sri Lanka but moved to Australia when she was 14.
She was educated in Melbourne and Paris, and published her first novel, 'The Rose Grower' in 1999. Her second novel, published in 2003, 'The Hamilton Case' was winner of the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Encore Award (UK) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific). 'The Lost Dog' was published in 2007. It was one of 13 books on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. From 1989 to 1992 she was a founding editor of the Australian Women's Book Review.
She was educated in Melbourne and Paris, and published her first novel, 'The Rose Grower' in 1999. Her second novel, published in 2003, 'The Hamilton Case' was winner of the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Encore Award (UK) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific). 'The Lost Dog' was published in 2007. It was one of 13 books on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. From 1989 to 1992 she was a founding editor of the Australian Women's Book Review.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 155 reviews
April 24, 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 STELLA PRIZE!
'That's the purpose of art. It gives form to experience. It makes sense of our lives!
Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser is a masterpiece of contemporary fiction. De Krester dives headfirst into the complexities of love, ambition, and the messy gap between who we are and who we want to be. With a narrative that's both razor sharp and deeply compassionate.
The novel examines the lives of characters grappling with personal and professional desires, each one portrayed with a realism that makes them feel achingly familiar. De Kretser's prose is gorgeous and balances humor and insight in a way that makes every page feel alive. Her observations about the human condition are startlingly precise, and she has a knack for capturing the quiet but powerful moments that shape our lives.
The characters wrestle with morally gray areas, ambitions that don't pan out, and relationships that require more than they're prepared to give, a testament to how relatable the themes are. It's not just a novel but an exploration of how we navigate the personal and social forces that pull us in different directions.
Theory & Practice is an unforgettable read, challenging readers to question their assumptions about love, success, and what it means to live authentically. This is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the last page. Michelle de Kretser has crafted a stunning work that deserves a place on every bookshelf.
My Highest Recommendation.
Warmest regards to Text Publishing for gifting me an advanced readers copy of Theory & Practice for review.
'That's the purpose of art. It gives form to experience. It makes sense of our lives!
Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser is a masterpiece of contemporary fiction. De Krester dives headfirst into the complexities of love, ambition, and the messy gap between who we are and who we want to be. With a narrative that's both razor sharp and deeply compassionate.
The novel examines the lives of characters grappling with personal and professional desires, each one portrayed with a realism that makes them feel achingly familiar. De Kretser's prose is gorgeous and balances humor and insight in a way that makes every page feel alive. Her observations about the human condition are startlingly precise, and she has a knack for capturing the quiet but powerful moments that shape our lives.
The characters wrestle with morally gray areas, ambitions that don't pan out, and relationships that require more than they're prepared to give, a testament to how relatable the themes are. It's not just a novel but an exploration of how we navigate the personal and social forces that pull us in different directions.
Theory & Practice is an unforgettable read, challenging readers to question their assumptions about love, success, and what it means to live authentically. This is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the last page. Michelle de Kretser has crafted a stunning work that deserves a place on every bookshelf.
My Highest Recommendation.
Warmest regards to Text Publishing for gifting me an advanced readers copy of Theory & Practice for review.
November 8, 2024
nothing like a campus novel to curb the desire to do a phd
March 21, 2025
I no longer wanted to write novels that read like novels. Instead of shapeliness and disguise, I wanted a form that allowed for formlessness and mess.
In this book, de Kretser has succeeded admirably at creating a novel that is built, productively, on 'formlessness and mess'. There's already that paradox in the statement 'a form that allowed for formlessness' and a playful critique of literary theory that is often based on the idea of form even when that very adopted structure is intentionally and programmatically designed to overspill the edges. Add too the internal intertextuality with Woolf's later novels (, , ), all texts which try to escape the 'rules' of the novel, of character and of temporality - and I'm in awe of de Kretser's ability to hold this all together rather than have it collapse in a gooey mess.
One way of binding the text is via the voice of the narrator who, we only late in the book learn, is named Cindy - a remnant from her Sri Lankan parents who emigrated to Australia with barely more than they could carry in their suitcase. Giving focus to all the strands of the book is Cindy's work on an MA dissertation on, yes, Virginia Woolf.
From this hangs a range of discourses from 1984 academia, perhaps the first generation to be forced into the straightjacket of literary theory - a topic with which de Kretser has some fun, however essential the ideas are, even if we don't name them in quite the same way today - to ideas of female inheritance from our mothers building on Woolf's statement that women think back through their mothers. For Cindy, she has two maternal lines: the biological one, and that of the 'Woolfmother': the writer who so many of us discovered in our teens who has lived with us through our intellectual lives.
The eponymous 'theory & practice' plays out in various ways: most pressingly, for me, in the uncomfortable reckoning with Woolf's situated and historicised colonialist mindset and racism; and the way Cindy proclaims herself a feminist and yet continues to be the secret 'other woman' in a fraught triangulated affair. Her realisation of the way she has refused to 'read' Olivia, to even acknowledge that she, too, has an interiority and a lived experience is collocated against the way Woolf brings a brown man from Ceylon (as it was then) and an Indian into her drawing rooms and yet allocates them no interiority or space to speak, shows no interest in even beginning to imagine their subjectivity.
For all the serious topics put to work here, what I take away is de Kretser's witty, sparky intelligence that can shift between acute moments of comic recognition ('she said that pretend-laughing with senior academics was an essential workplace skill we should be allowed to list on our CVs') to understated but weighty scenes where one of her friends enumerates the people he has lost just that week to AIDs/HIV.
This is wonderfully rigorous and provocative but somehow manages to be serious without ever becoming pompous or pretentious. This is likely to be some of the most stimulating 200 pages I'll read this year.
August 2, 2024
This is de Kretser at her very best � intellectually rigorous, bursting with youth and desire, styling prose in ways most can only dream about. She’s also playing with hybrid forms blending fiction, memoir and essay. Colonialism and its many evils lie at the heart of this book and her light touch makes it all the more affecting and effective. There’s so much to grapple with here. I feel like de Kretser seeks to reinvent herself as a writer with each book which is wildly impressive and exciting.
December 31, 2024
This novel wouldn't be everyone's choice but I found it both intellectually challenging and enjoyable. As the title suggests, de Kretser is interested in the difference between theory and practice: in literature, in art and music and more broadly in life itself. She suggests that we all (and novelists in particular of course) shape our experiences into stories, better to deal with the emotions they evoke. That's the theory. In practice, 'life is cruel and messy'.
The cover has a photo of the author as a young woman but De Kretser has insisted that the book is not auto-fiction.Her narrator (whose name we finally learn is Cindy) arrives in Melbourne to do her Masters in English Literature. She is studying the later novels of Virginia Woolf. As a mature student, I also did a Masters in English around this time (not in Melbourne). I was challenged and often bemused by the literary criticism of the day, based largely on French critics and philosophers, as my original degree had been influenced the 'modern criticism' of F R Leavis. What a change!
Cindy is fascinated by literary theories and also by Marxism and feminism - she is a post-modern woman after all. But when she falls in love she finds her passions and jealousies do not match the theories of 'open' relationships. When she reads Woolf's diaries she sees that her apparent 'freedom' and 'woman's room of her own' were only possible because of the English class system that had bred her. It did not prevent Woolf from holding racist and colonialist views.
De Kretser is originally from Sri Lanka and the exploitative nature of colonialism is explored in part in this novel. The book is also very much about mothers and daughters and how we deal with our maternal legacy rather than the patriarchy. Cindy's mother appears as a character through regular short letters to her daughter, whose life is fundamentally different from her own. Woolf is also Cindy's literary 'Woolfmother'. The changing position of the photo of Woolf that Cindy has on her wall becomes emblematic of how we can love, resent, blame and accept our mothers.
If this sounds complicated, it is! It's a relatively short book that kept me completely absorbed over two days. There was one sequence introduced towards the end that didn't obviously fit, but that's a small criticism. A bonus was the occasional perfect description of nature: the summer 'pineapple-syrup light (that) dripped on everything'; the 'roll and slosh of the depths (of the sea'; 'little flowers of cold printed along my arms' (on a cold winter's day).
This is a rich novel, one to be savoured and re-read. A very satisfying end to my reading year.
A
The cover has a photo of the author as a young woman but De Kretser has insisted that the book is not auto-fiction.Her narrator (whose name we finally learn is Cindy) arrives in Melbourne to do her Masters in English Literature. She is studying the later novels of Virginia Woolf. As a mature student, I also did a Masters in English around this time (not in Melbourne). I was challenged and often bemused by the literary criticism of the day, based largely on French critics and philosophers, as my original degree had been influenced the 'modern criticism' of F R Leavis. What a change!
Cindy is fascinated by literary theories and also by Marxism and feminism - she is a post-modern woman after all. But when she falls in love she finds her passions and jealousies do not match the theories of 'open' relationships. When she reads Woolf's diaries she sees that her apparent 'freedom' and 'woman's room of her own' were only possible because of the English class system that had bred her. It did not prevent Woolf from holding racist and colonialist views.
De Kretser is originally from Sri Lanka and the exploitative nature of colonialism is explored in part in this novel. The book is also very much about mothers and daughters and how we deal with our maternal legacy rather than the patriarchy. Cindy's mother appears as a character through regular short letters to her daughter, whose life is fundamentally different from her own. Woolf is also Cindy's literary 'Woolfmother'. The changing position of the photo of Woolf that Cindy has on her wall becomes emblematic of how we can love, resent, blame and accept our mothers.
If this sounds complicated, it is! It's a relatively short book that kept me completely absorbed over two days. There was one sequence introduced towards the end that didn't obviously fit, but that's a small criticism. A bonus was the occasional perfect description of nature: the summer 'pineapple-syrup light (that) dripped on everything'; the 'roll and slosh of the depths (of the sea'; 'little flowers of cold printed along my arms' (on a cold winter's day).
This is a rich novel, one to be savoured and re-read. A very satisfying end to my reading year.
A
Read
December 20, 2024I must have missed something reading this book. Although I understood that frustration of having to redefine that image of your writer heroes (my undoing was Wifedom by Anna Funder of George Orwell), this book left me with a “meh�. Something about the vignettes, the long and short passages, odd descriptions, and some capitalised words to denote emphasis or feeling of others, made me scratch my head.
I’ve read Virginia Woolf and some other authors mentioned in this book and understood how Theory & Practice was meant to be a blend of fiction, memoir and essay however I think it missed the mark somehow?
Maybe it’s because this year, I learned that I’m not a fan of auto-fiction (after reading the works Annie Ernaux which left me feeling the same way) and this book “seems� to be like that.
Overall I think it’s also partly because of the pretentious characters - they weren’t people I’d like as friends at all as they lack empathy. The only time we get to have some feeling for the protagonist is when she makes realisations of the limitations of her hero Woolf, colonisation and treatment of women. That’s when I perked up and thought, “ah, here she is, more of this please!� then in one foul swoop the highbrow academic pretentious discussions about literature put an end to it.
I’ve read Virginia Woolf and some other authors mentioned in this book and understood how Theory & Practice was meant to be a blend of fiction, memoir and essay however I think it missed the mark somehow?
Maybe it’s because this year, I learned that I’m not a fan of auto-fiction (after reading the works Annie Ernaux which left me feeling the same way) and this book “seems� to be like that.
Overall I think it’s also partly because of the pretentious characters - they weren’t people I’d like as friends at all as they lack empathy. The only time we get to have some feeling for the protagonist is when she makes realisations of the limitations of her hero Woolf, colonisation and treatment of women. That’s when I perked up and thought, “ah, here she is, more of this please!� then in one foul swoop the highbrow academic pretentious discussions about literature put an end to it.
December 6, 2024
finished the book tipsy�. TERRIBLE opener, so trite. well-written and an easy read, valuable claims about criticism but ofc the narrator was grating at times� girl please
April 18, 2025
***Shortlisted for The 2025 Stella Prize***
"Theory & Practice". Or should that be "Theory & Praxis"?
A lot of this went way over my head. Basically it's about a student writing her thesis about the works of Virginia Woolf and overcoming her heartache at being betrayed by her lover by doing the same to another woman. So much for the sisterhood.
"Deconstructed relationship" anyone?
Set in 1986 in Melbourne, there are a lot of parties, plenty of drinking, and bucket loads of obsession and jealousy.
I've not read Virginia Woolf and this book doesn't inspire me to.
Lots of prattle about people being terribly clever and/or arty. Competing with other people who are also terribly clever and/or arty. But seemingly supportive of one another. Dah-ling.
Throw into the mix the sad relationship our main character has with her widowed mother - as upset and frustrated with her as her mother is proud of her daughter - it shows a self absorbed side of academia. There's a scene at one of the many dinner parties where the circle of women friends and acquaintances get stuck in blaming their mothers for everything that is wrong in their lives. Ugh.
It's an unpleasant look at women who supposedly support feminism as the behaviours don't mirror the ideals.
From reading a few other reviews apparently our protagonist's name was Cindy. I completely missed that. I just wasn't engaged with the story
enough.
Probably the only thing I'll remember of this down the track is the little gift our narrator includes when returning her lover's lasagna dish after their breakup. Classy.
I'm disappointed as I was really hoping to enjoy this. Michelle De Krester just looks so darn likeable on the front and back covers of this edition, and in interviews I've read comes across as warm and affable. But the story and characters just didn't appeal. They seemed self indulgent and caught up in their own drama.
3 stars because the writing is actually really good.
"Our lives always come down to money and shit."
A philosopher could not have said it better.
"Theory & Practice". Or should that be "Theory & Praxis"?
A lot of this went way over my head. Basically it's about a student writing her thesis about the works of Virginia Woolf and overcoming her heartache at being betrayed by her lover by doing the same to another woman. So much for the sisterhood.
"Deconstructed relationship" anyone?
Set in 1986 in Melbourne, there are a lot of parties, plenty of drinking, and bucket loads of obsession and jealousy.
I've not read Virginia Woolf and this book doesn't inspire me to.
Lots of prattle about people being terribly clever and/or arty. Competing with other people who are also terribly clever and/or arty. But seemingly supportive of one another. Dah-ling.
Throw into the mix the sad relationship our main character has with her widowed mother - as upset and frustrated with her as her mother is proud of her daughter - it shows a self absorbed side of academia. There's a scene at one of the many dinner parties where the circle of women friends and acquaintances get stuck in blaming their mothers for everything that is wrong in their lives. Ugh.
It's an unpleasant look at women who supposedly support feminism as the behaviours don't mirror the ideals.
From reading a few other reviews apparently our protagonist's name was Cindy. I completely missed that. I just wasn't engaged with the story
enough.
Probably the only thing I'll remember of this down the track is the little gift our narrator includes when returning her lover's lasagna dish after their breakup. Classy.
I'm disappointed as I was really hoping to enjoy this. Michelle De Krester just looks so darn likeable on the front and back covers of this edition, and in interviews I've read comes across as warm and affable. But the story and characters just didn't appeal. They seemed self indulgent and caught up in their own drama.
3 stars because the writing is actually really good.
"Our lives always come down to money and shit."
A philosopher could not have said it better.
November 27, 2024
I can already see myself reading this again, this time with a pencil, highlighters and notes (maybe even index cards as a nod to the protagonist). Right after I go out and buy a personal copy.
March 12, 2025
THEORY & PRACTICE
Michelle de Kretser
This book has me thinking about The Big Bang, how all this material had to have been compacted into such a small space before (bang) it explodes into being.
Theory & Practice feels like that. 192 short pages that still feel like it could have been 592, packed into a space that, upon reading, bursts to life in an expansive, creative, and honestly, at rare times, incomprehensible way.
Why is this book so good? Maybe because it’s one that just seems so distracted with itself it continually threatens to just not work out in the end. And yet.. that’s a point it’s making.
The narrator (the eventual narrator) decides to break the fourth (fifth? sixth?) wall and tell us something different than she has been so far. It’s almost a bit campus novel, dealing with life at university in Melbourne where the narrator is writing a thesis on Virginia Woolf, feminist theory, etc.
(I was underarmed coming to this text as I have not read Woolf, but I don’t think that affected how I felt about the book—I understand that there is a gap between what Woolf preached and her actions, between her Theory and her Practice.)
The narrator starts her own undefined Big Bang with Kit (engaged to Olivia)—the novel shines in its revelation of how this competition eats away at our narrator, and how a man gets away with having his sexual relationships be as formal or informal as he whims. The novel’s negative space allows for an important spotlight on Olivia, perhaps the unifying character of the work.
Theory & Practice’s feminist focus brings in an ongoing complex and affecting timeline around the narrator’s thoughts about her mother, her eventual daughter, and literature, making a nest of contradictions for the reader to sit inside and reflect.
In the end, the novel pulls itself taut while it also bursts with short, seemingly unrelated “essays�, each sequentially more impressive in how it comes full circle to the text/narrative/plot. The novel left me with a strange dreary nostalgia, a hopeful gratitude for having read it.
Michelle de Kretser
This book has me thinking about The Big Bang, how all this material had to have been compacted into such a small space before (bang) it explodes into being.
Theory & Practice feels like that. 192 short pages that still feel like it could have been 592, packed into a space that, upon reading, bursts to life in an expansive, creative, and honestly, at rare times, incomprehensible way.
Why is this book so good? Maybe because it’s one that just seems so distracted with itself it continually threatens to just not work out in the end. And yet.. that’s a point it’s making.
The narrator (the eventual narrator) decides to break the fourth (fifth? sixth?) wall and tell us something different than she has been so far. It’s almost a bit campus novel, dealing with life at university in Melbourne where the narrator is writing a thesis on Virginia Woolf, feminist theory, etc.
(I was underarmed coming to this text as I have not read Woolf, but I don’t think that affected how I felt about the book—I understand that there is a gap between what Woolf preached and her actions, between her Theory and her Practice.)
The narrator starts her own undefined Big Bang with Kit (engaged to Olivia)—the novel shines in its revelation of how this competition eats away at our narrator, and how a man gets away with having his sexual relationships be as formal or informal as he whims. The novel’s negative space allows for an important spotlight on Olivia, perhaps the unifying character of the work.
Theory & Practice’s feminist focus brings in an ongoing complex and affecting timeline around the narrator’s thoughts about her mother, her eventual daughter, and literature, making a nest of contradictions for the reader to sit inside and reflect.
In the end, the novel pulls itself taut while it also bursts with short, seemingly unrelated “essays�, each sequentially more impressive in how it comes full circle to the text/narrative/plot. The novel left me with a strange dreary nostalgia, a hopeful gratitude for having read it.
November 6, 2024
The latest novel by multi-award-winning Australian author, Michelle de Kretser is an innovative blend of fiction, memoir and nonfiction. To what extent it’s memoir is up to the reader to figure out, but given its front cover photograph of a young de Kretser, we should assume some autobiographical influence, if not content. De Kretser claimed in an interview that her aim with this hybrid form was to achieve a more truthful rendering of life than would be possible in a traditional novel.
Set in 1986, the story’s protagonist, a Sri Lankan born young woman, moves from Sydney to St Kilda where she’s undertaking postgraduate studies on the novels of Virginia Woolf. Her busy social life leads to her becoming involved with Kit, another woman’s boyfriend. Increasingly afflicted by feelings of jealousy, rivalry with and animosity towards the other woman, she begins to visualise petty acts of vengeance. A vocal and committed feminist herself and deeply influenced by Woolf’s feminist principles, she’s worried that in aggressively pursuing Kit, she’s betraying her own values. Her anxiety is exacerbated by her troubled codependent relationship with her mother, which is portrayed through excerpts from her mother’s letters. Set within the framework of Woolf’s sometimes flawed legacy, the protagonist’s quest to balance her own desires with principles she aspires to gives the story an intriguing dimension.
One of the characters says at one stage “I’m going to focus on making art that doesn’t look like art�, which is what de Kretser has successfully achieved. Her spare, deceptively ingenuous prose works to convey the protagonist’s inner world of conflicting ideologies, cultural contradictions and longing with authority.
Set in 1986, the story’s protagonist, a Sri Lankan born young woman, moves from Sydney to St Kilda where she’s undertaking postgraduate studies on the novels of Virginia Woolf. Her busy social life leads to her becoming involved with Kit, another woman’s boyfriend. Increasingly afflicted by feelings of jealousy, rivalry with and animosity towards the other woman, she begins to visualise petty acts of vengeance. A vocal and committed feminist herself and deeply influenced by Woolf’s feminist principles, she’s worried that in aggressively pursuing Kit, she’s betraying her own values. Her anxiety is exacerbated by her troubled codependent relationship with her mother, which is portrayed through excerpts from her mother’s letters. Set within the framework of Woolf’s sometimes flawed legacy, the protagonist’s quest to balance her own desires with principles she aspires to gives the story an intriguing dimension.
One of the characters says at one stage “I’m going to focus on making art that doesn’t look like art�, which is what de Kretser has successfully achieved. Her spare, deceptively ingenuous prose works to convey the protagonist’s inner world of conflicting ideologies, cultural contradictions and longing with authority.
January 10, 2025
3.5 stars. An original, odd short novel mainly about a 24 year old young woman doing a masters degree in Melbourne, Australia, on Virginia Woolf. The book reads like a memoir of the author. The narrator is Sri Lankan, immigrated to Australia with her parents, and writes historical novels.
The novel begins with the beginnings of a fictional work by the young woman narrator. The ‘fictional� story is suddenly ended at the end of chapter one, then we shift to the narrator who comments in the present first person on her life as a student and her relationships during her 24th and 25th years of life. She has a relationship with an engineering student, Kit, who is in another relationship.
The author certainly takes the ‘novel� to a new form, which I liked.
I found this book a satisfying read, however parts of the book did not pique my interest.
This book was first published in 2024.
The novel begins with the beginnings of a fictional work by the young woman narrator. The ‘fictional� story is suddenly ended at the end of chapter one, then we shift to the narrator who comments in the present first person on her life as a student and her relationships during her 24th and 25th years of life. She has a relationship with an engineering student, Kit, who is in another relationship.
The author certainly takes the ‘novel� to a new form, which I liked.
I found this book a satisfying read, however parts of the book did not pique my interest.
This book was first published in 2024.
November 29, 2024
Finished Tuesday morning. Not for me, too self-indulgent.
January 5, 2025
she writes incredibly, the sentences tumbled out like silk. need to read all of virginia woolf’s novels and enter a triangular relationship now
April 12, 2025
I imagine literatis find Theory & Practice a cathartic and mentally engaging read. Perhaps de Kretser even liberates contemporary Woolf studies that “[squish] ideas about Woolf’s novels in a corset of theory,� designed to constrict and uphold. I can confidently say Theory & Practice’s unconventional form and my lack of formal training in Woolf lit. makes for a confusing experience.
I finished the book because I hoped I would find a way into the story. Maybe invitations were the narrator’s relationship with maternal figures and Olivia—she situates herself as losing a primitive romantic war whereby two women vie for Kit’s attention. She also notes her conception of Olivia’s adornment: virginal, flowery, “femininely� clothed. Conscious of this “retrograde,� “abject,� and “unfeminist� competition, de Kretser gets ahead of our critique: “Had the writer no shame?� However, aside from the narrator’s relationship with some women, this novel went over my head. I couldn’t even find a way in, so to speak, through the narrator writing a research project. Give Theory & Practice a read if you’re more initiated than me (it’s not a high bar).
And now, back to grading theoretical papers.
I finished the book because I hoped I would find a way into the story. Maybe invitations were the narrator’s relationship with maternal figures and Olivia—she situates herself as losing a primitive romantic war whereby two women vie for Kit’s attention. She also notes her conception of Olivia’s adornment: virginal, flowery, “femininely� clothed. Conscious of this “retrograde,� “abject,� and “unfeminist� competition, de Kretser gets ahead of our critique: “Had the writer no shame?� However, aside from the narrator’s relationship with some women, this novel went over my head. I couldn’t even find a way in, so to speak, through the narrator writing a research project. Give Theory & Practice a read if you’re more initiated than me (it’s not a high bar).
And now, back to grading theoretical papers.
Read
February 18, 2025Thank you catapult for the gifted copy
There’s no way I get around sounding super nerdy with this one, but there’s something exciting about reading a book critiquing post-structuralism through a deconstructionist text.This is fun, I swear!
de Kretser opens this book with a realist novel to then interrupt it with - record scratch - the narrator coming in and telling us she has stalled. This isn’t the novel she’s meant to be writing, instead we are taken through a hyper-realist novel seeking truth (whatever that is) involving the narrator’s time in grad school, a messy love affair, and the gulf between theory and practice. I can feel de Kreser having a blast playing with form; is this a memoir, a narrative, or an essay? While I think the Australian cover, with a photo of the author in her 20’s, has a little more fun with this aspect, the US cover seems to want us to focus on Virginia Woolf.
Woolf’s work has never called to me and knowing some of her background has put me off. That’s actually what this book is partially playing with. Most of us are probably a bit messy and contradictory when it comes to our ideals vs our reality, especially in our 20s, but what do we do when an artist doesn't meet our moral standards in their private lives? The narrator discovers this as she reads Woolf’s diaries for her thesis while also realizing that she herself may not be the ultimate feminist she would like to be.
Back to that situationship, a lot of shame and jealousy comes out of it as she makes Olivia a rival while pursuing Kit (who claims to be in a “deconstructed� relationship). We see other feminists in her sphere and start to notice that some of them aren't acting like theory says they should. Eventually you have to ask yourself how are we defining feminism here. Maybe that gap between who we are and who we want to be is where the truth lies. Maybe jealousy and shame bring it to the surface.
This is the kind of book I wish I had more time to write about, there’s colonialism, capitalism, gender politics, and mother/daughter relationships. All I can do is ask you to read it, savor it, and then go back to the beginning to see if you spot any ‘reality� in the original novel.
There’s no way I get around sounding super nerdy with this one, but there’s something exciting about reading a book critiquing post-structuralism through a deconstructionist text.This is fun, I swear!
de Kretser opens this book with a realist novel to then interrupt it with - record scratch - the narrator coming in and telling us she has stalled. This isn’t the novel she’s meant to be writing, instead we are taken through a hyper-realist novel seeking truth (whatever that is) involving the narrator’s time in grad school, a messy love affair, and the gulf between theory and practice. I can feel de Kreser having a blast playing with form; is this a memoir, a narrative, or an essay? While I think the Australian cover, with a photo of the author in her 20’s, has a little more fun with this aspect, the US cover seems to want us to focus on Virginia Woolf.
Woolf’s work has never called to me and knowing some of her background has put me off. That’s actually what this book is partially playing with. Most of us are probably a bit messy and contradictory when it comes to our ideals vs our reality, especially in our 20s, but what do we do when an artist doesn't meet our moral standards in their private lives? The narrator discovers this as she reads Woolf’s diaries for her thesis while also realizing that she herself may not be the ultimate feminist she would like to be.
Back to that situationship, a lot of shame and jealousy comes out of it as she makes Olivia a rival while pursuing Kit (who claims to be in a “deconstructed� relationship). We see other feminists in her sphere and start to notice that some of them aren't acting like theory says they should. Eventually you have to ask yourself how are we defining feminism here. Maybe that gap between who we are and who we want to be is where the truth lies. Maybe jealousy and shame bring it to the surface.
This is the kind of book I wish I had more time to write about, there’s colonialism, capitalism, gender politics, and mother/daughter relationships. All I can do is ask you to read it, savor it, and then go back to the beginning to see if you spot any ‘reality� in the original novel.
January 19, 2025
Theory & Practice is my first Michelle de Kretser book and while I didn't absolutely love it I don't think it will be the last book of hers I'll read.
The book is set in 1986 and a young woman (unnamed until very late in the book) arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. Living in St Kilda she meets all sorts of people including Kit. Kit claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers.
Theory & Practice takes a vignette approach which I loved despite its choppiness and disjointedness. It really gave the sense of a diary. It was also a play on form and structure. Part fiction and part essay and possibly part memoir? The themes fall heavily into both desire and jealously. The core relationship made me uneasy though and at times I found it hard to read about. The topics touched on jumped wildly especially towards the end which gave it a chaotic vibe.
I enjoyed the read somewhat but it didn't grip me in the way I hoped. I think I enjoyed the writing style and structure but not the plot. Still it was a quick read and if you are a fan of de Kretser's work I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
The book is set in 1986 and a young woman (unnamed until very late in the book) arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. Living in St Kilda she meets all sorts of people including Kit. Kit claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers.
Theory & Practice takes a vignette approach which I loved despite its choppiness and disjointedness. It really gave the sense of a diary. It was also a play on form and structure. Part fiction and part essay and possibly part memoir? The themes fall heavily into both desire and jealously. The core relationship made me uneasy though and at times I found it hard to read about. The topics touched on jumped wildly especially towards the end which gave it a chaotic vibe.
I enjoyed the read somewhat but it didn't grip me in the way I hoped. I think I enjoyed the writing style and structure but not the plot. Still it was a quick read and if you are a fan of de Kretser's work I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
December 7, 2024
Raced through this delightful read. De Kretser has a vivid way with words. Her descriptions are non pretentious and pitched to perfection. A delight. The storytelling resists explaining too much. Keenly observed characters with the “I� chummy and flawed and likeable nonetheless. Some slabs of content feel quite extra to the story but tied in by theme and suspect I am missing some clever referencing to Virginia Woolf.
January 8, 2025
4.5
I adored this - and read it in one sitting. Sharp, witty, relatable and intensely provocative about all the right things.
Go ahead and burn your portrait of Virginia Woolf in your bathroom sink, speak to your Woolfmother and real mother, and enter a triangular relationship.
I adored this - and read it in one sitting. Sharp, witty, relatable and intensely provocative about all the right things.
Go ahead and burn your portrait of Virginia Woolf in your bathroom sink, speak to your Woolfmother and real mother, and enter a triangular relationship.
April 17, 2025
Very enjoyable. I liked living with the voice and mind of the narrator who remains unnamed for most of the book -- I'll keep the secret here. The voice reminded me of Rachel Cusk in the Outline Trilogy. Is that simply the auto fiction style? (I must read Ernaux's The Years!)
In any case, I enjoyed the playfulness of her use of theory and practice and how she blended her attempts to write an acceptable thesis for her degree while remaining true to her experience of Woolf and her right to talk back to the Empire. We are attracted to and study a work of art because of our personal connection to it, yet to be academically respected the personal must be weeded out in favour of the theoretically rigorous academic approach that will appease the powers that be in her department. But a lawyer does the same, taking up a cause or a client for one reason, but having to do the work in the language and style and using the arguments that will win the case before the court. Compare and contrast!
I also liked her dissection of the experience of shame and how it exists beyond permitted language, when we are tested and told we do not pass, when we are held responsible for the misdeeds of others, which we may not mention or name (and if we do we are not heard).
The Hegelian pairing Thesis and Antithesis and her friend and spouter of wisdom Antigone/Anti/Antithesis was another bit of playfulness I appreciated, but where is the synthesis? Oh, could it rest in the Narrator, named ?
Clever, witty, appealing, authentic and just the right length.
3.75* rounded to 4*
In any case, I enjoyed the playfulness of her use of theory and practice and how she blended her attempts to write an acceptable thesis for her degree while remaining true to her experience of Woolf and her right to talk back to the Empire. We are attracted to and study a work of art because of our personal connection to it, yet to be academically respected the personal must be weeded out in favour of the theoretically rigorous academic approach that will appease the powers that be in her department. But a lawyer does the same, taking up a cause or a client for one reason, but having to do the work in the language and style and using the arguments that will win the case before the court. Compare and contrast!
I also liked her dissection of the experience of shame and how it exists beyond permitted language, when we are tested and told we do not pass, when we are held responsible for the misdeeds of others, which we may not mention or name (and if we do we are not heard).
The Hegelian pairing Thesis and Antithesis and her friend and spouter of wisdom Antigone/Anti/Antithesis was another bit of playfulness I appreciated, but where is the synthesis? Oh, could it rest in the Narrator, named ?
Clever, witty, appealing, authentic and just the right length.
3.75* rounded to 4*
January 14, 2025
I don't know how to review this book, because nothing about it should work and yet everything does. This reads more like memoir than a novel, but the strong insistence that it is a novel also forces the question of what narrative is, what writers try to achieve, and how life and work intersect. It reminded me incessantly of Monkey Grip - possibly because it is set in a in the same city in similar eras (well a decade or so) - but likely because both inhabit this similar uncertain netherworld in which art is made out of truth, or maybe truth is made out of life, in a way that examines the intersection between social constraint and self. De Kretser's work has always felt carefully constructed to me, but Theory and Practice did not (although it clearly was). Rather it feels unleashed, like this was just waiting to be written, even as it resonates, puns and circles back on itself in clever ways. And even as it explicitly toys with how our theories and our practice shape each other. Our protagonist grapples with her love for Woolf and her growing exposure to Woolf's racism and antisemitism, just as she hits the Melbourne theory-intensive English literature scene, and just as she jealously fixates on her lover's girlfriend while writing feminism. We see how theory can be a refuge, but also a deception, an avoidance and a hypocrisy. A way of not-seeing or refusing to look. The work also chronicles the way that things which feel eternal in your 20s change, like everything else, like you, in fact.
It has been almost two weeks since I read this that I am reviewing, and my thoughts about this book still feel more whirled than settled. I did love reading it though, and tore through it, which feels worth recording. I also want very much to say that I thought she was very kind to St Kilda, a suburb with great pubs but a lousy beach, but this is not at all relevant to anyone else's enjoyment of the work.
February 1, 2025
“Two apples had gone soft in the kitchen. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out.�
A unique blend of fiction, memoir and essay that was a pleasure to read. A poignant exploration of desire, jealously and identity through a lens of colonialism and assimilation. The way in which de Kretser captures and describes themes so familiar to many women’s lived experiences is truly masterful.
A unique blend of fiction, memoir and essay that was a pleasure to read. A poignant exploration of desire, jealously and identity through a lens of colonialism and assimilation. The way in which de Kretser captures and describes themes so familiar to many women’s lived experiences is truly masterful.
March 24, 2025
This is one of the best received books this year in the lit mags, possibly because it’s a retrospective campus novel about the a woman who studying critical and feminist theory in 1980s Melbourne. The ŷ reviews indicate this is a very steamy scenario for many readers.
If the goal is nostalgia and maybe broadening the Bildungsroman genre a bit, the novel succeeds. It pays homage to Woolf’s idea that women’s writing should be fragmented and formless because the writer is always interrupted. I didn’t, however, much depth in its discussion of theory or think it was even particularly effective at introducing or applying it. For instance I was surprised when the narrator encounters info about Woolf being racist which complicates her in a few obvious ways. I got excited that this indicated a narrative turn, but the tension was quickly resolved by gesturing to the power of imagination.
This is probably an excellent book club choice for a lot of people and I imagine those conversations could be pretty interesting. I may also be too over-touched theory professionally for this book.
If the goal is nostalgia and maybe broadening the Bildungsroman genre a bit, the novel succeeds. It pays homage to Woolf’s idea that women’s writing should be fragmented and formless because the writer is always interrupted. I didn’t, however, much depth in its discussion of theory or think it was even particularly effective at introducing or applying it. For instance I was surprised when the narrator encounters info about Woolf being racist which complicates her in a few obvious ways. I got excited that this indicated a narrative turn, but the tension was quickly resolved by gesturing to the power of imagination.
This is probably an excellent book club choice for a lot of people and I imagine those conversations could be pretty interesting. I may also be too over-touched theory professionally for this book.
March 19, 2025
This was brilliant. It felt like reading a slightly more honest and slightly less obnoxious diary entry from Garner. Loved it.
EDIT - I have since re-read Garner’s diaries and take this back. There is nothing dishonest about her entries, even where they are obnoxious/selfish. It is a diary, after all.
EDIT - I have since re-read Garner’s diaries and take this back. There is nothing dishonest about her entries, even where they are obnoxious/selfish. It is a diary, after all.
December 31, 2024
I had the same underwhelming experience of theory over literature when I was at uni. It seemed like literature was less about novels and more about Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Lacan, semiotics and rhizomes� de Kretser describes a pretty identical experience in the 80s.
I liked her reflections on Woolf and E W Perera, and how her intellectual curiosity is restricted by the siloed tensions between white middle class feminism, racism, and post colonialism.
I really didn’t like the way she treated her lover’s girlfriend. It’s such a stereotype, the jealous lover trope. She’s self-obsessed (but I guess that’s what your 20s are for) and way more confident in her talents than most of us were in the 90s.
This may get more stars the longer I sit with it.
I liked her reflections on Woolf and E W Perera, and how her intellectual curiosity is restricted by the siloed tensions between white middle class feminism, racism, and post colonialism.
I really didn’t like the way she treated her lover’s girlfriend. It’s such a stereotype, the jealous lover trope. She’s self-obsessed (but I guess that’s what your 20s are for) and way more confident in her talents than most of us were in the 90s.
This may get more stars the longer I sit with it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
January 12, 2025This was fine, though it didn't live up to its promised(?) dissolution of the novel and the essay, or between theory and practice.
January 13, 2025
I found this a middling book, some nice writing and description but not a lot happening plot wise, then it ended on a fairly odd note.
Read
April 17, 2025The following reviews have been shared by Text Publishing - publisher of Theory & Practice:
‘Thrillingly original.�
Sigrid Nunez
‘Michelle de Kretser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.�
Neel Mukherjee
ҵ the midst of a late coming-of-age plot effervescent with romantic and intellectual misadventure, de Kretser considers memory—how we enshrine our cultural heroes and how we tell ourselves the stories of our own lives—with absolute rigour and perfect clarity. Structurally innovative and totally absorbing, this is a book that enlivens the reader to every kind of possibility. I savoured every word.�
Jennifer Croft, author of The Extinction of Irena Rey
‘Michelle de Kretser is a genius—one of the best writers working today. She is startlingly, uncannily good at naming and facing what is most difficult and precious about our lives. Theory & Practice is a wonder, a brilliant book that reinvents itself again and again, stretching the boundaries of the novel to show the ways in which ideas and ideals are folded into our days, as well as the times when our choices fail to meet them. There’s no writer I’d rather read.�
V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Women’s Prize for Fiction and Carol Shields Prize award-winning Brotherless Night
‘Sharp-witted and mesmerising…The narrator’s clever political insights and beautiful depictions of art and literature offer readers a view into a captivating mind. De Kretser is at the top of her game.�
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
�4.5 stars. An innovation blend of fiction, memoir and non-fiction…One of the characters says at one stage, “I’m going to focus on making art that doesn’t look like art�, which is what de Kretser has successfully achieved. Her spare, deceptively ingenuous prose works to convey the character’s inner world of conflicting ideologies, cultural contradictions and longing, with authority.�
Good Reading
‘Prepare to have your preconceived notions of what a novel can be shattered as you delve into this extraordinary work.�
Conscious Living Magazine
‘Brilliant and mesmerising.�
Gleaner
‘…Intensely moving…�
Declan Fry, ABC Arts
‘I found it utterly engaging…I enjoyed it immensely.�
Kate Evan, ABC RN The Bookshelf
‘This strange little book is probably the best thing to be published in 2024. It refutes the cliches of the novel, memoir, and essay by somehow being all three at once. It’s funny, barefaced, human, supremely smart, and it grips the reader with a confidence in prose writing that is unparalleled. You’ll find something to marvel at on every page. Read and reread. I am obsessed.�
Ben’s pick of 2024, Better Read Than Dead
�Theory & Practice functions as a potent reminder that the purpose of art is not always distinct from the purpose of life: generating imperfect pathways towards empathy. Through practical demonstration, de Kretser shows exactly what the novel can do. Only a novelist of her calibre could have written it.�
Eda Gunaydin, Conversation
�Theory & Practice blazes with intelligence, passion and wit. I devoured it, greedily, in a single glorious sitting.�
Sarah Waters
ҵ connecting betrayals of trust in this loose-leafed, inclusive and utterly absorbing novel, de Kretser finds a fresh form and language for shameless witness.�
Felicity Plunkett, Saturday Paper
‘Michelle de Kretser has deployed fiction, essay, and memoir to powerful effect, showing without telling the “messy gap� and the “breakdowns� between theory and practice.�
Nicole Abadee, Australian Book Review
‘There is a sense that we must approach de Kretser as the narrator herself approaches Woolf, by pushing our way through the obstacles she presents—knocking through the walls of ambiguity that stand between theory and practice and its elusive meaning—and adapt the spaces thereby created to our own “needs� as readers. To somehow—just as the narrator writes back to Woolf—“write back�, metaphorically at least, to de Kretser herself.�
Australian
ҵ this ambitious and dazzling work, de Kretser illuminates the ways in which uncomfortable truths of class, race, privilege, desire and shame reside in the gap between theory and practice.�
Mek Yiman, Big Issue
‘A very intriguing novel…I definitely recommend it.�
RNZ Nine to Noon
‘An essential novel for anyone interested in the expansive possibilities of the literary form.�
Alison Huber, Readings Monthly
‘You can feel the pangs of female jealousy, the strain of mother-daughter relationships and the spark of young love. Perfect for a summer read, but also with a timeless appeal.�
Good Weekend
�Theory & Practice takes seriously what it means to love: not only people, but ideas too. She shows how love’s ugliest emotions—jealousy, shame, disappointment, betrayal—are often embedded alongside the tricky thinking that breaks us down and shapes us, allowing us to glimpse other stories beneath the ones we inherit.�
Ruth McHugh-Dillon, Meanjin
‘A really delightful and clever and thoughtful book.�
David Gaunt, ABC Sydney
‘De Kretser perceptively evokes how maternal figures, both birthright and adoptive, maintain a hold on us, despite our attempts to distance ourselves…A form-melding book contending with colonialism, the disharmony that can arise between our purported ideals and how we live, the depths of jealousy and shame, and motherhood and the maternal figures who shape us…An inquiry into what fiction can look like and what it can achieve.�
Jack Callil, Guardian
‘A perfectly observed meditation…Traverses the schisms of torn lovers, flawed heroes, imploding institutions, ignored phone calls from anxious mothers, clashing cultures, galvanising friendships, warm beds, cold sharehouses, theory and practice. And through it all, a yearning for life and experience that drives the young narrator on.�
Finegan Kruckemeyer, InReview, Best Books of 2024
‘Effortlessly disrupts the form of the novel.�
Molly Murn, InReview, Best Books of 2024
ҵ Theory & Practice, Michelle de Kretser’s familiar narrative dexterity and piercing moral sensibility are overlaid on a new schema which threads non-fiction and memoir elements through fiction. The subtle brilliance of the underlying conceit makes this one of her best novels, and probably the bravest.�
Michael Winkler
‘Michelle de Krester’s Theory & Practice hit all my sweet spots…�
Zora Simic
‘De Krester [channels] her bravura technique into a sharp, impeccably observed narrative that also acts as essay and critique of, among other things, the (Virginia) Woolfmother.�
André Dao, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘I read [Theory & Practice] slowly to savour every perfect sentence. Each one is a tiny act of magic. I have no idea how it’s done.�
Melanie Cheng, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘I loved Theory & Practice for its deft and energetic grappling with big questions, and its simmering, controlled rage.�
Fiona Wright, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘An understated masterpiece, [Michelle de Kretser’s] best novel to date.�
Yves Rees, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘[Michelle] de Kretser is at her formidable best in this exhilarating blend of memoir, fiction and essay…[A] brief, crystal-clear novel.�
Michael Williams, Qantas Magazine
‘[T]he novel’s spare, fragmented structure elegantly incorporates its contradictory chorus of voices and ideas, which combine to suggest complex truths.�
Age
‘Fiction, memoir, fictional memoir and essay, Michelle de Kretser’s scintillating shape-shifter is a distillation of the ideas explored in her ever-evolving novels…Don’t be frightened by the title of this brilliant, cut-glass, funny novel, which is both love story and satire. De Kretser’s St Kilda is as memorable as Helen Garner’s Fitzroy.�
Susan Wyndham, Best Books of 2024, Guardian
‘A genre-defying novel.�
Sydney Morning Herald
‘A brilliant account of what it means to be a feminist and wrestling with universal emotions that cannot be denied. It’s a slim book, something you can finish in one glorious and insightful sitting.�
Women’s Agenda
‘A thought-provoking narrative on desire, shame and moral complexities.�
Harper’s Bazaar
‘That feeling when a book absolutely has you…You read it up until the point where your eyes have drooped…and you want to keep going. That’s the power this book has over me. It’s a ripper.�
Clare Wright
‘Michelle de Kretser’s new novel Theory and Practice is her briefest, yet it contains whole constellations of thought and feeling. Is it biographical fiction, or fictionalised biography? It doesn’t matter. A condensed marvel of a novel.�
Geordie Williamson, Best Books of 2024, Australian
‘Any new de Kretser novel is a huge event because I know it will be utterly brilliant: deft, inclusive, funny and moving, like all her books.�
Fiona McFarlane, author of Highway 13, Australian Women’s Weekly
‘I loved this novel.�
Michael Williams, Read This podcast
‘Michelle de Kretser is to my mind one of the finest writers alive and Theory & Practice a lightning strike of a book.�
Ali Smith
‘Startlingly intelligent and stylish.�
Jasmine Vojdani, New York Magazine
‘I loved it…Raw, funny, truthful, youthful.�
Tessa Hadley
‘A brilliantly auto fictive knot, composed of the shifting intensities and treacheries of young love, of complex inheritances both literary and maternal, of overwhelming jealousies and dark shivers of shame…In her refusal to write a novel that reads like a novel, de Kretser instead gifts her reader a sharp examination of the complex pleasures and costs of living.�
2025 Stella Prize Judges
�Theory & Practice is sly, spiky, and brilliant: an intellectual coming-of-age story that accounts for all that can’t be learned in the academy—or in books…[It] flits confidently between modes: memoir and novel, personal and political, fact and fiction. Essayistic asides commingle with tender memories; heady emotions intrude on serious philosophising. The aim, the narrator says, is to capture a sense of “formlessness and mess”—in other words, real life.�
Sophia Stewart, Atlantic
‘A stunning book…Instructive, a pleasure to read the sentences on the page.�
ABC RN The Bookshelf
‘This is a novel that is intelligent, funny and complicated � and worth reading more than once.�
Kate Evans, ABC
‘Thrillingly original.�
Sigrid Nunez
‘Michelle de Kretser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.�
Neel Mukherjee
ҵ the midst of a late coming-of-age plot effervescent with romantic and intellectual misadventure, de Kretser considers memory—how we enshrine our cultural heroes and how we tell ourselves the stories of our own lives—with absolute rigour and perfect clarity. Structurally innovative and totally absorbing, this is a book that enlivens the reader to every kind of possibility. I savoured every word.�
Jennifer Croft, author of The Extinction of Irena Rey
‘Michelle de Kretser is a genius—one of the best writers working today. She is startlingly, uncannily good at naming and facing what is most difficult and precious about our lives. Theory & Practice is a wonder, a brilliant book that reinvents itself again and again, stretching the boundaries of the novel to show the ways in which ideas and ideals are folded into our days, as well as the times when our choices fail to meet them. There’s no writer I’d rather read.�
V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Women’s Prize for Fiction and Carol Shields Prize award-winning Brotherless Night
‘Sharp-witted and mesmerising…The narrator’s clever political insights and beautiful depictions of art and literature offer readers a view into a captivating mind. De Kretser is at the top of her game.�
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
�4.5 stars. An innovation blend of fiction, memoir and non-fiction…One of the characters says at one stage, “I’m going to focus on making art that doesn’t look like art�, which is what de Kretser has successfully achieved. Her spare, deceptively ingenuous prose works to convey the character’s inner world of conflicting ideologies, cultural contradictions and longing, with authority.�
Good Reading
‘Prepare to have your preconceived notions of what a novel can be shattered as you delve into this extraordinary work.�
Conscious Living Magazine
‘Brilliant and mesmerising.�
Gleaner
‘…Intensely moving…�
Declan Fry, ABC Arts
‘I found it utterly engaging…I enjoyed it immensely.�
Kate Evan, ABC RN The Bookshelf
‘This strange little book is probably the best thing to be published in 2024. It refutes the cliches of the novel, memoir, and essay by somehow being all three at once. It’s funny, barefaced, human, supremely smart, and it grips the reader with a confidence in prose writing that is unparalleled. You’ll find something to marvel at on every page. Read and reread. I am obsessed.�
Ben’s pick of 2024, Better Read Than Dead
�Theory & Practice functions as a potent reminder that the purpose of art is not always distinct from the purpose of life: generating imperfect pathways towards empathy. Through practical demonstration, de Kretser shows exactly what the novel can do. Only a novelist of her calibre could have written it.�
Eda Gunaydin, Conversation
�Theory & Practice blazes with intelligence, passion and wit. I devoured it, greedily, in a single glorious sitting.�
Sarah Waters
ҵ connecting betrayals of trust in this loose-leafed, inclusive and utterly absorbing novel, de Kretser finds a fresh form and language for shameless witness.�
Felicity Plunkett, Saturday Paper
‘Michelle de Kretser has deployed fiction, essay, and memoir to powerful effect, showing without telling the “messy gap� and the “breakdowns� between theory and practice.�
Nicole Abadee, Australian Book Review
‘There is a sense that we must approach de Kretser as the narrator herself approaches Woolf, by pushing our way through the obstacles she presents—knocking through the walls of ambiguity that stand between theory and practice and its elusive meaning—and adapt the spaces thereby created to our own “needs� as readers. To somehow—just as the narrator writes back to Woolf—“write back�, metaphorically at least, to de Kretser herself.�
Australian
ҵ this ambitious and dazzling work, de Kretser illuminates the ways in which uncomfortable truths of class, race, privilege, desire and shame reside in the gap between theory and practice.�
Mek Yiman, Big Issue
‘A very intriguing novel…I definitely recommend it.�
RNZ Nine to Noon
‘An essential novel for anyone interested in the expansive possibilities of the literary form.�
Alison Huber, Readings Monthly
‘You can feel the pangs of female jealousy, the strain of mother-daughter relationships and the spark of young love. Perfect for a summer read, but also with a timeless appeal.�
Good Weekend
�Theory & Practice takes seriously what it means to love: not only people, but ideas too. She shows how love’s ugliest emotions—jealousy, shame, disappointment, betrayal—are often embedded alongside the tricky thinking that breaks us down and shapes us, allowing us to glimpse other stories beneath the ones we inherit.�
Ruth McHugh-Dillon, Meanjin
‘A really delightful and clever and thoughtful book.�
David Gaunt, ABC Sydney
‘De Kretser perceptively evokes how maternal figures, both birthright and adoptive, maintain a hold on us, despite our attempts to distance ourselves…A form-melding book contending with colonialism, the disharmony that can arise between our purported ideals and how we live, the depths of jealousy and shame, and motherhood and the maternal figures who shape us…An inquiry into what fiction can look like and what it can achieve.�
Jack Callil, Guardian
‘A perfectly observed meditation…Traverses the schisms of torn lovers, flawed heroes, imploding institutions, ignored phone calls from anxious mothers, clashing cultures, galvanising friendships, warm beds, cold sharehouses, theory and practice. And through it all, a yearning for life and experience that drives the young narrator on.�
Finegan Kruckemeyer, InReview, Best Books of 2024
‘Effortlessly disrupts the form of the novel.�
Molly Murn, InReview, Best Books of 2024
ҵ Theory & Practice, Michelle de Kretser’s familiar narrative dexterity and piercing moral sensibility are overlaid on a new schema which threads non-fiction and memoir elements through fiction. The subtle brilliance of the underlying conceit makes this one of her best novels, and probably the bravest.�
Michael Winkler
‘Michelle de Krester’s Theory & Practice hit all my sweet spots…�
Zora Simic
‘De Krester [channels] her bravura technique into a sharp, impeccably observed narrative that also acts as essay and critique of, among other things, the (Virginia) Woolfmother.�
André Dao, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘I read [Theory & Practice] slowly to savour every perfect sentence. Each one is a tiny act of magic. I have no idea how it’s done.�
Melanie Cheng, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘I loved Theory & Practice for its deft and energetic grappling with big questions, and its simmering, controlled rage.�
Fiona Wright, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘An understated masterpiece, [Michelle de Kretser’s] best novel to date.�
Yves Rees, Best Books of 2024, Spectrum
‘[Michelle] de Kretser is at her formidable best in this exhilarating blend of memoir, fiction and essay…[A] brief, crystal-clear novel.�
Michael Williams, Qantas Magazine
‘[T]he novel’s spare, fragmented structure elegantly incorporates its contradictory chorus of voices and ideas, which combine to suggest complex truths.�
Age
‘Fiction, memoir, fictional memoir and essay, Michelle de Kretser’s scintillating shape-shifter is a distillation of the ideas explored in her ever-evolving novels…Don’t be frightened by the title of this brilliant, cut-glass, funny novel, which is both love story and satire. De Kretser’s St Kilda is as memorable as Helen Garner’s Fitzroy.�
Susan Wyndham, Best Books of 2024, Guardian
‘A genre-defying novel.�
Sydney Morning Herald
‘A brilliant account of what it means to be a feminist and wrestling with universal emotions that cannot be denied. It’s a slim book, something you can finish in one glorious and insightful sitting.�
Women’s Agenda
‘A thought-provoking narrative on desire, shame and moral complexities.�
Harper’s Bazaar
‘That feeling when a book absolutely has you…You read it up until the point where your eyes have drooped…and you want to keep going. That’s the power this book has over me. It’s a ripper.�
Clare Wright
‘Michelle de Kretser’s new novel Theory and Practice is her briefest, yet it contains whole constellations of thought and feeling. Is it biographical fiction, or fictionalised biography? It doesn’t matter. A condensed marvel of a novel.�
Geordie Williamson, Best Books of 2024, Australian
‘Any new de Kretser novel is a huge event because I know it will be utterly brilliant: deft, inclusive, funny and moving, like all her books.�
Fiona McFarlane, author of Highway 13, Australian Women’s Weekly
‘I loved this novel.�
Michael Williams, Read This podcast
‘Michelle de Kretser is to my mind one of the finest writers alive and Theory & Practice a lightning strike of a book.�
Ali Smith
‘Startlingly intelligent and stylish.�
Jasmine Vojdani, New York Magazine
‘I loved it…Raw, funny, truthful, youthful.�
Tessa Hadley
‘A brilliantly auto fictive knot, composed of the shifting intensities and treacheries of young love, of complex inheritances both literary and maternal, of overwhelming jealousies and dark shivers of shame…In her refusal to write a novel that reads like a novel, de Kretser instead gifts her reader a sharp examination of the complex pleasures and costs of living.�
2025 Stella Prize Judges
�Theory & Practice is sly, spiky, and brilliant: an intellectual coming-of-age story that accounts for all that can’t be learned in the academy—or in books…[It] flits confidently between modes: memoir and novel, personal and political, fact and fiction. Essayistic asides commingle with tender memories; heady emotions intrude on serious philosophising. The aim, the narrator says, is to capture a sense of “formlessness and mess”—in other words, real life.�
Sophia Stewart, Atlantic
‘A stunning book…Instructive, a pleasure to read the sentences on the page.�
ABC RN The Bookshelf
‘This is a novel that is intelligent, funny and complicated � and worth reading more than once.�
Kate Evans, ABC
March 17, 2025
BOOK #3 THEORY AND PRACTICE BY MICHELLE DE KRETSER, LONGLISTED FOR STELLA PRIZE 2025
Michelle de Kretser is an acclaimed Australian novelist, born in Sri Lanka and relocated to Australia in 1972 at the age of 14. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers� Prize. Her novel The Lost Dog was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008, and her 2017 work, The Life to Come, was shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize.
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to read this book—thank you, Stella Prize, for the digital copy.
Theory & Practice is a novel that demands deep contemplation. It begins with an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, only for the narrator to declare that the story has stalled.
The narrator, a young Sri Lankan-Australian woman, is immersed in her master’s research thesis on Virginia Woolf. Her academic journey is interwoven with personal relationships, particularly her involvement with Kit, who is in a ‘deconstructed� relationship with another woman, Olivia. While the complexity of this love triangle is intriguing, I found the sections on her research into Virginia Woolf even more compelling.
The novel blurs the lines between memoir, fiction, and essay. Although it delves into the narrator’s personal life, it also explores literary theories and philosophical musings on political figures and artists. One of the novel’s central themes is encapsulated in the line:
“THEORY AND PRACTICE REMAINED DISTINCT ACTIVITIES THAT OCCUPIED SEPARATE ROOMS IN MY MIND.�
Throughout the book, we are reminded of the tension between theory and practice. The narrator has a poster of Virginia Woolf in her room and affectionately refers to her as “Woolf Mom,� drawing comparisons between Woolf and her own mother while reflecting on the imperfections of motherhood. As readers, we gain insight into her thought process—sometimes conflicted, sometimes chaotic. Her studies require her to engage with weighty literary works, further enriching the novel’s intellectual depth.
I particularly loved the sections exploring Virginia Woolf’s work, where the narrator presents thoughtful, rational interpretations of various theories.
Writing a review for this book is challenging because it resists categorization—it is introspective, layered, and thought-provoking. Michelle de Kretser has crafted a novel that is as intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging.
Michelle de Kretser is an acclaimed Australian novelist, born in Sri Lanka and relocated to Australia in 1972 at the age of 14. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers� Prize. Her novel The Lost Dog was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008, and her 2017 work, The Life to Come, was shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize.
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to read this book—thank you, Stella Prize, for the digital copy.
Theory & Practice is a novel that demands deep contemplation. It begins with an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, only for the narrator to declare that the story has stalled.
The narrator, a young Sri Lankan-Australian woman, is immersed in her master’s research thesis on Virginia Woolf. Her academic journey is interwoven with personal relationships, particularly her involvement with Kit, who is in a ‘deconstructed� relationship with another woman, Olivia. While the complexity of this love triangle is intriguing, I found the sections on her research into Virginia Woolf even more compelling.
The novel blurs the lines between memoir, fiction, and essay. Although it delves into the narrator’s personal life, it also explores literary theories and philosophical musings on political figures and artists. One of the novel’s central themes is encapsulated in the line:
“THEORY AND PRACTICE REMAINED DISTINCT ACTIVITIES THAT OCCUPIED SEPARATE ROOMS IN MY MIND.�
Throughout the book, we are reminded of the tension between theory and practice. The narrator has a poster of Virginia Woolf in her room and affectionately refers to her as “Woolf Mom,� drawing comparisons between Woolf and her own mother while reflecting on the imperfections of motherhood. As readers, we gain insight into her thought process—sometimes conflicted, sometimes chaotic. Her studies require her to engage with weighty literary works, further enriching the novel’s intellectual depth.
I particularly loved the sections exploring Virginia Woolf’s work, where the narrator presents thoughtful, rational interpretations of various theories.
Writing a review for this book is challenging because it resists categorization—it is introspective, layered, and thought-provoking. Michelle de Kretser has crafted a novel that is as intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging.
March 12, 2025
Loved everything about this one! Wonderfully creative and unique! Bravo!
I'm picking up A Room Of Ones Own Next. It semed like a natural progression..........
"In A Room Of One's Own, published in 1929, Woolf writes 'We think back through our mothers if we are women.' It's one of her most famous observations, and shrined and feminist thinking and giving off a quasi-religious glow. I pondered what it might mean for a daughter to think back through her mother. When wolf was growing up, the tea table stood at the center of her family's life. Every day her mother Julia steven, presided over afternoon tea in the drawing room. Drawing room tea was an aesthetic ritual and it called for a certain type of conversation: sparkling, flowing, light. Julia Stephen excelled at it. Watching her, her daughter's absorbed the rules. After she died, her husband Leslie required the young women to take over their mother's role at the tea table. Virginia and her sister, Vanessa, grew to love this daily ceremony and their father's house, it's prescribed manners, the constraining tea table politeness it imposed. When Leslie Stephen died, in 1904, his daughter's set up a scandalously loose new form of household, one in which categories came unfixed. Virginia and Vanessa drank coffee after dinner instead of tea and substituted toilet paper for starch table napkins. Under their roof women and men talked together freely about everything, even sex."
~pg.64 Theory and Practice
For more of my book content check out
I'm picking up A Room Of Ones Own Next. It semed like a natural progression..........
"In A Room Of One's Own, published in 1929, Woolf writes 'We think back through our mothers if we are women.' It's one of her most famous observations, and shrined and feminist thinking and giving off a quasi-religious glow. I pondered what it might mean for a daughter to think back through her mother. When wolf was growing up, the tea table stood at the center of her family's life. Every day her mother Julia steven, presided over afternoon tea in the drawing room. Drawing room tea was an aesthetic ritual and it called for a certain type of conversation: sparkling, flowing, light. Julia Stephen excelled at it. Watching her, her daughter's absorbed the rules. After she died, her husband Leslie required the young women to take over their mother's role at the tea table. Virginia and her sister, Vanessa, grew to love this daily ceremony and their father's house, it's prescribed manners, the constraining tea table politeness it imposed. When Leslie Stephen died, in 1904, his daughter's set up a scandalously loose new form of household, one in which categories came unfixed. Virginia and Vanessa drank coffee after dinner instead of tea and substituted toilet paper for starch table napkins. Under their roof women and men talked together freely about everything, even sex."
~pg.64 Theory and Practice
For more of my book content check out
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