Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2023
256 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From one of Australia's most celebrated authors comes a powerful mother-daughter drama that explores the fault lines between love and control, pairing the claustrophobic intensity of Room and My Year of Rest and Relaxation with the youthful angst of Freshwater.
Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother's Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days awaiting the birth of her child—and her mother's next move in a shocking power struggle over who will raise the baby. To fill the seemingly endless hours of her imprisonment, she writes to her unborn child, determined that her baby will know the truth, no matter what happens.
Karuna's pregnancy is the result of a heady act of independence, lust, and defiance that happened in a moment of freedom from her overprotective mother. In reaction to her daughter's recklessness, Karuna's mother locks her inside their apartment to her to make sure she can't get into any more trouble. While postpartum confinement is a tradition in many cultures, is Karuna's an act of love—or emotional abuse? As the birth approaches, Karuna and her mother repeatedly trip the fault lines between love and control. And somehow, despite their battles, Karuna recognizes her mother's love in even the strangest of behaviors.
At times tense and unnerving, One Hundred Days illuminates the pain, confusion, and thrill of growing up and the overwhelming desire of adults to protect the children they
"Subtle, difficult, lovely, and gorgeously written." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A compelling portrayal of the teetering movement from girl to woman ... A modern fairytale for and about those who live in housing commission flats, for those who don't feel they are worth anything, those who feel like they don't count." —Sydney Review of Books (Australia)
"A glorious song of a novel [that] can be savoured by young and old... . Pung changes our perceptions and sympathies, building characters with depth and complexity... . At its core, this is an uplifting story of a woman defining her own life, knowing that she will give her child the freedom to do the same." —The Saturday Paper (Australia)
"At the core of Pung's work is a fearless emotional honesty and unapologetic exploration of what it means to be human." —SBS Voices (Australia)
"A deceptively simple plot under which bubbles the latent power of raw emotional need and complicated love. Pung's writing is liltingly lovely; every word careful and considered." —Reading Monthly (Australia)
"Written with Pung's characteristic verve and attention to detail and dialogue...it offers provocative treatment of the dynamics of control and uneasy acquiescence, of the working-class poor, of cross-cultural relationships, teen pregnancy and second-generation migrants." —The Age (Australia)
"A thoughtful, finely observed book" —The West Australian
This information about One Hundred Days was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father's Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, and the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, One Hundred Days was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Voss literary prizes and longlisted for an ABIA Award in the category of Literary Fiction. Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.
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