A warm, innovative, witty new novel from Sophie Cunningham Alice Fox has been struggling for years with her novel. Her agent, Sarah, has misgivings. Does anyone really want to read about Leonard Woolf? Alice claims that he was once a rock star of the colonial era. What Sarah wants to know is: will it sell? But Alice doggedly continues on with her project, researching in English libraries and travelling to Sri Lanka (once Ceylon) where Leonard was once a colonial administrator. This Devastating Fever interweaves two timelines. Alice, between 2004 and 2021 and Leonard, between 1904 and his death in 1969. Alice's world is consumed with climate change, bushfires and in 2020, a global pandemic. Leonard's professional life starts in Ceylon. On one year's leave in 1911 he met Virginia Stephen and married her the following year. While his famous wife is better remembered, Leonard was also a prolific writer. A novel about writing a novel seems like a recipe for disaster, yet Sophie Cunningham has pulled off something genuinely moving. Through Alice's irrational determination to write her novel, and her self-deprecatory wit, we enter into the heart of one of the 20th century's most famous and famously complicated marriages. Deeply humane, full of humour and delightfully gossipy about the sex lives of the Bloomsbury Group, This Devastating Fever is innovative in format, chatty in tone and will seduce readers with its simple, direct voice. This Devastating Fever, by Sophie Cunningam. Published by Ultimo Press. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba. First published at Books + Publishing Release date 7th September, 2022 Comments are closed.
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