About the Book
"Winona is a compelling character, full of life and humor, 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." --Midwest Book Review
A brilliant work of feminist fiction, this sharp, powerful novel follows one woman's struggle to free herself from the confines of contemporary domesticity.
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 :
"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."
--Necessary Fiction
"Winona's observations blur with a kind of madness--but the danger, we come to understand, is very real."
--The Guardian
"Written in a stream of consciousness modernist style, this is a short, electrifying novel about one woman's search for herself, her voice, and her freedom."
--Northshire Bookstore
"Thunderhead reveals a single day (or possibly a repeat of all the days) of writer Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes up to throwing a dinner party, you won't put this down until you've figured out the truth of what's happening to her. Darling's writing is observant and reflective of the mental state of someone solely trying to survive."
--Jenny Gilroy, E. Shaver Booksellers
Join me in a-day-in-the-life of Winona--wife, mother, dreamer--a woman who is stuck in suburbia with a husband breathing down her neck in anticipation that she might actually have a little fun, children she loves yet finds just a bit too noisy, and a requirement to prepare for special parties on top of all the other daily tasks on her overworked list of to-dos. And then there's the inner woman: Nora, the main character of the romance novel Winona is writing. Soon, inner voices mix with Winona's outer world until life becomes a confusing emotional blur. Good Lord! I don't know how I would manage to walk the tightrope of Winona's world. This is a quick, short read from Australia, with an emotional punch that will either bring you to tears of frustration or catch you yelling advice at this woman--we SO want her to win!"
--Linda Bond, Auntie's Bookstore
"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 humor, insight, and energy. I loved Winona--and her story."
--Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep
"Thunderhead takes the brewing storm of domesticity and cracks it open with incredible vulnerability, generosity, and humor. At once Rachel Cusk, at once Jenny Offill, and altogether entirely Miranda Darling, this powerful, restless, irresistible novel is essential reading."
--Laura Jean McKay, author of The Animals in That Country
"Winona is a compelling character, full of life and humor, 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."
--Dr Ann Skea, Midwest Book Review
"[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."
--Melanie Kembrey, The Sydney Morning Herald
"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 humour. It's formidably brilliant feminist fiction that sparks a compelling conversation with its literary forebears, Woolf in particular.
--Cameron Woodhead, The Sydney Morning Herald
"A feminist triumph and homage to Virginia Woolf, Miranda Darling's Thunderhead is a potent exploration of suburban entrapment for women."
--Cassandra Atherton, Australian Book Review
"An uncomfortable black comedy that centers on coercive control and domestic violence, it's impossible to look away."
--Justine Hyde, The Saturday Paper
"Exquisitely wrought, Thunderhead exposes the deadness at the heart of the Australian dream."
--Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Australian
"Thunderhead reveals a single day (or possibly a repeat of all the days) of writer Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes up to throwing a dinner party, you won't put this down until you've figured out the truth of what's happening to her. Darling's writing is observant and reflective of the mental state of someone solely trying to survive."
--Jenny Gilroy, E. Shaver Booksellers
"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."
--Mel Fulton, Books+Publishing
"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."
--Anne Green, Good Reading Magazine
"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."
--Danielle Bagnato, The Big Issue
"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."
--Lucy Fleming, Readings
"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."
--Deborah Pike, The Conversation
