'An astonishing, wonderful memoir of an extraordinary life' HENRY MARSH, author of Do No Harm
An unforgettable memoir from the author of the sensational international bestseller Tracks- the story of a mother and daughter, of love, loss and the pursuit of freedom
In 1977, twenty-seven-year-old Robyn Davidson set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the sea.
A life of almost constant travelling followed. From the deserts of Australia, to Sydney's underworld; from Sixties street life, to the London literary scene; from migrating with nomads in Tibet, to 'marrying' an Indian prince, Davidson's quest was motivated by an unquenchable curiosity about other ways of seeing and understanding the world.
Davidson threw bombs over her shoulder and seeds into her future on the assumption that something would be growing when she got there. The only terrain she had no interest in exploring was the past.
In Unfinished Woman Davidson turns at last to explore that long avoided country. Through this brave and revealing memoir, she delves into her childhood and youth to uncover the forces that set her on her path, and confront the cataclysm of her early loss.
Unfinished Woman is an unforgettable investigation of time and memory, and a powerful interrogation of how we can live with and find beauty in the uncertainty and strangeness of being.
What a life! Robyn Davidson came to prominence in 1980 with the book Tracks, her classic account of travelling solo across the Australian desert with the assistance of her infamous camels. In the long-awaited memoir, Unfinished Woman, Davidson finds herself finally confronting the death of her mother at the age of 13, something that in a lifetime of writing she had never quite been able to find the words for.
Davidson’s account of her 1950s childhood in Queensland is evocative and beautifully rendered, with her wonder of the natural world ever-present. Yet family life teeters between love and connection and confusing emotional absences, these fissures coming to a head with her mother’s suicide. What follows is a kind of soul restlessness, and Davidson’s adulthood is characterised by an adventurous and unconventional energy, always walking her own path and enduring incredible challenges with her eyes wide open. As the reader, sometimes you wince at her choices and sometimes you shake your head in admiration at the pure guts of the woman.
Apart from being a magnificent adventurer Robyn Davidson is a beautiful writer, an evocative combination that makes for a deeply engaging and though-provoking memoir.
- Ellen