About the Book
‘Darkly funny, astute, timely’ Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep
‘Powerful, restless, irresistible’ Laura Jean McKay, author of The Animals in That Country
A black comedy, set in suburbia, about one woman’s struggle to be free.
When Winona Dalloway begins her day — in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet’, wake up — she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.
On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices — a mind both wild and precise.
And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …
About the Author :
Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She read English and Modern Languages at Oxford then took a Masters in Strategic Studies and Defence from the ANU (GSSD). She became an adjunct scholar at a public policy think tank, specialising in non-traditional security threats. She has published both fiction and nonfiction.
Review :
‘Darkly funny, astute, timely — Thunderhead’s protagonist insists on being heard, and we as readers feel compelled to listen. To care. Such a fresh and lovely voice, full of humour, insight, and energy. I loved Winona — and her story.’
‘Thunderhead takes the brewing storm of domesticity and cracks it open with incredible vulnerability, generosity, and humour. At once Rachel Cusk, at once Jenny Offill, and altogether entirely Miranda Darling, this powerful, restless, irresistible novel is essential reading.’
“Thunderhead is edgy black comedy and sports real-time internal monologue meticulously describing one day of domestic purgatory … Darling's whip-smart short novel creates a strong narrative voice spiked with caustic wit, intertextual reference, and intelligent humor. It's formidably brilliant feminist fiction that sparks a compelling conversation with its literary forebears, Woolf in particular.”
‘[This] darkly comic novel is a biting, hilarious and original take on motherhood, suburbia and domesticity … Thunderhead will hit the mark for fans of novelists such as Melissa Broder, Miranda July and Jenny Offill plus, of course, Cusk herself.’
‘A feminist triumph and homage to Virginia Woolf, Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead is a potent exploration of suburban entrapment for women.’
‘Set over one fever-pitched day … It's a daring book, adopting the aesthetics of Deborah Levy with the velocity of a crime thriller and an off-kilter voice, deeply internal, darkly comic, clipped, and Woolfish … Thunderhead brims with magazine-style musings — all those dizzying top notes, that intertextuality, the style. It's a strong, complex and self-aware voice, and it is the primary vehicle through which we gauge Winona's resilience and determination. If The Catcher in the Rye were instead penned by a domestic violence survivor, it might read a little like Thunderhead. For fans of Melissa Broder, Elizabeth Hardwick and Edwina Preston.’
‘Short, sharp, and immersive … Thunderhead is a powerful story that explores motherhood, mental health, our sense of self and our right to autonomy in the context of relentless, everyday domestic life. This is complex, layered and beautiful writing that invites readers to consider their own wild and chaotic inner worlds, and the ways in which negative relationships shape us.’
‘In prose that’s intense, darkly funny and searingly astute, Darling successfully conveys the sense of entrapment, the frantic bargaining with fate and the ultimate powerlessness of a woman overwhelmed by a vicious man.’
‘Miranda Darling writes from the absolute edge and leads us atop a tightrope strung high between submission and freedom. This book is the loss of balance, the breathlessness before the fall. Sharp, complex, and painfully relatable, Thunderhead is a firecracker of a story that lives up to its title. Darling’s dry wit and stark prose swallowed me whole, and I know I’ll be ruminating over it for a while to come.’
‘[A] chillingly sophisticated novella … Thunderhead is an innovative, smartly hewn dissection of a mother’s mental load … Darling writes her story with a ferocious sensitivity … it all builds to a thunderous (pun intended) denouement that you’re unlikely to forget anytime soon.’
‘I was hooked.’
‘An uncomfortable black comedy that centres on coercive control and domestic violence, it’s impossible to look away.’
‘Exquisitely wrought, Thunderhead exposes the deadness at the heart of the Australian dream.’
‘In a burst of poetic and darkly humorous prose, Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead unleashes the turbulent interior life of its protagonist, Winona Dalloway, onto the page … Like Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, her stream-of-consciousness narration immerses us in the present and past and back again, over the course of one day … Thunderhead, a brilliant work of feminist fiction with its superb, deft use of language, is a similar bid for freedom.’
With Thunderhead, her third novel, Miranda Darling rewrites Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) for contemporary readers, exchanging the genteel drawing rooms of post-WWI London for contemporary suburbia’s gleaming middle-class kitchens stocked with pricey appliances and organic produce … What the sparkle here conceals is very dark: Winona is a woman who’s learned to watch her step, and her charm, which is so enjoyable, functions like makeup on a bruise.
‘Winona is a compelling character, full of life and humour, and Miranda Darling draws you into her life so thoroughly that Thunderhead becomes a powerful and gripping experience of the insidious and subtle effects of coercive control.’
