Wild Surmise Dorothy Porter 2002

Dustjacket synopsis:
"Alex Leefson is astronomy's glamour girl, in love with the satellite Europa and the equally unreachable Phoebe. Meanwhile, her husband Daniel rages against his tedious job, his failing health and his wife's infidelity.

"Full of Dorothy Porter's customary bite and sensuality, Wild Surmise is an engrossing duet between two passionately estranged voices."

Quotes:
"possesses a blowtorch talent - and knows how to use it" - The Australian
"Dorothy Porter has adopted the verse novel with extraordinary success ... Porter's move into this genre had caught the public imagination and broken the barrier between poetry and prose" - Australian Book Review

First Paragraph:

Europa

Let us travel
the three hundred and ninety million miles
to Jupiter's smoothest moon,
Europa.

You can't miss Jupiter
hanging over its moon
in a whirling rainbow mass
of push, pull and poison.

Feel Europa's freezing
toxic silence.

You're standing on a raft
of thick alien ice,
but you're moving -
foating like a berg
on the deepest ocean
in the unknown world.

This is the roof, the shield
of a black liquid world,
where you may one day
drop like a warm stone.

A new world
where you might learn
colder lessons 
than nothing.

From the Picador paperback edition, 2002.

Notes:
This novel was shortlisted the Miles Franklin Award in 2003.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2005 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: January 29, 2005.