Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Conversation
The Conversation
Brigid Magner, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, RMIT University

Death, grief and survival: two new Australian novels reinvent the elegy for an age of climate catastrophe

A Weeping Woman– Rembrandt (c.1645) Public domain

Gretchen Shirm’s The Crying Room and Briohny Doyle’s Why We Are Here share a preoccupation with death and grief and what it means to live on, without intimate others, during a climate crisis. Both novels feature protagonists who lose parents and partners, and both explore their themes via writer-narrators who are producing fictions.


Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.