Beyond the Book: Background information when reading Disquiet

Beyond the Book

This article relates to Disquiet

Disquiet is Julia Leigh's second work of fiction, and it took her nine years to write. When asked why it took her so long, Leigh replies: "There is a nice quote I like from poet Elizabeth Bishop, something like scientists and artists are alike in that they are prepared to waste effort ... When I am exploring things, when I set out, I can't be guaranteed of a result." Disquiet follows her first novel, The Hunter, which won international critical acclaim and secured her a spot on the London Observer's list, 21 writers to watch in the 21^st century. The strength of The Hunter also won her a Rolex Mentor and Protégée Arts Initiative scholarship that included a year of mentoring with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who was an advocate for Leigh's novella. When Leigh wanted to turn to another project, Morrison encouraged her to stick with Disquiet.

Leigh is currently a Ph.D candidate at the University of Adelaide and is a law and philosophy graduate of the University of Sydney. She currently splits her time between Australia and New York, where she teaches creative writing at Barnard College.

Leigh's work can be seen as a mixture of Hemingway and Woolf: Hemingway's clean, plain style writing mixed with Woolf's emphasis on the interiority of her characters over a plot propelled by action. Many critics have already commented on the resonance of Woolf's To the Lighthouse in Leigh's Disquiet.

Virginia Woolf's impact on the development of English literature cannot be underestimated, and, as indicated by Leigh's richly emotionally but pared down prose, her work is still affecting writers today. To the Lighthouse was a new kind of novel, one that de-emphasized plot in order to highlight and investigate the psychology of the characters. Woolf's novel is considered one of the greatest examples of modernist literature and one of the main works to herald a seismic shift in the scope and role of the novel. As a result of Woolf's work, along with that of Joyce and Proust, during the 1910-1920s, the novel was now able to explain the small moments of life, the bits that happened in between the major, dramatic parts. It was not necessary to write about compelling events; life, in all of its mundanity, was compelling event enough. This breakthrough made way for Leigh's tiny novella that intimately explores one woman's journey from the brink of death back to life.

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This article relates to Disquiet. It first ran in the November 12, 2008 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.