The Aunt's Story
Encyclopedia
The Aunt's Story is the third published novel by the Australian novelist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner
, Patrick White
. It tells the story of Theodora Goodman, a lonely middle-aged woman who travels to France after the death of her mother, and then to America, where she experiences what is either a gradual mental breakdown or an epiphanic revelation.
Although the novel was shunned by critics and the reading public upon its initial publication in 1948, White himself expressed a personal fondness for it: "It is the one I have most affection for," he wrote in 1959, "and I always find it irritating that only six Australians seem to have liked it."
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
, Patrick White
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
. It tells the story of Theodora Goodman, a lonely middle-aged woman who travels to France after the death of her mother, and then to America, where she experiences what is either a gradual mental breakdown or an epiphanic revelation.
Although the novel was shunned by critics and the reading public upon its initial publication in 1948, White himself expressed a personal fondness for it: "It is the one I have most affection for," he wrote in 1959, "and I always find it irritating that only six Australians seem to have liked it."
External links
- Excerpts from the novel at the ABC's "Why Bother With Patrick White?" archive.
- Synopsis and interpretation by Alan Lawson at the ABC's "Why Bother With Patrick White?" archive.