Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Dec 2023
304 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
A spellbinding memoir exploring time and memory, home and belonging, from the internationally bestselling author of Tracks, "an unforgettably powerful book" (Cheryl Strayed).
In 1977, while she was in her twenties, 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 Outback to Sydney's underworld; from sixties street life, to the London literary scene; from migrating with nomads in India and Tibet, to marrying an Indian prince. The only territory she avoided was the past. In Unfinished Woman, she ventures into that unknown, unearthing an ache for a lost but barely remembered mother and an unmet desire to feel at home in her freedom.
Adventurous but guarded, fearless yet broken, Davidson asks: how can we live with pain and uncertainty, to find beauty in the strangeness of being? Unfinished Woman is a stunning literary achievement, inviting readers in as a world-famous wandering spirit is, for the first time, laid truly bare.
"Complex ... well-written and insightful." ―Kirkus Reviews
"[Davidson] excavates her childhood, romantic life, and family traumas in this raw and thorny memoir ... Her rueful tone and assertion that her fate often felt like 'the playing out of forces [she] had no hand in' hits hard. It makes for painful yet cathartic reading." ―Publishers Weekly
"Searching, captivating and miraculously honest. Davidson has a voice we want to travel with, and to know." ―Lisa Brennan-Jobs, author of Small Fry
"Immersive and profound, Robyn Davidson's Unfinished Woman is a portal to understanding a daughter's grief. 'We take our mothers into us; that is where they live,' she writes. So much of her mother's life may remain unknown, but through memoir, Davidson completes what she considers an impossible task: crafting a moving portrait of her mother. This book will stay with me." ―Jeannie Vanasco, author of The Glass Eye
"Stunning. Robyn Davidson lives and writes with an explorer's courage, but this book is more than an adventure story. Unfinished Woman is an unfiltered glimpse into the fierce pursuit of freedom and connection, woven with a mother-daughter bond untouchable by time" ―Kendra Atleework, author of Miracle Country
This information about Unfinished Woman 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.
Robyn Davidson was born on a cattle property in Queensland. She went to Sydney in the late sixties, then returned to study in Brisbane before going to Alice Springs where the events of her book, Unfinished Woman began. Since then she has travelled extensively, has lived in London, New York and India. In the early 1990's she migrated with and wrote about nomads in north west India. She is now based in Melbourne, but spends several months a year in the Indian Himalayas.
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