Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room

“An amnesiac returns to Australia to confront her past in Skilbeck’s debut novel.”

“Skilbeck’s prose is as measured as poetry, and the way the narration shifts between different characters provides an almost cubist view of people and events.”

“Skilbeck creates some memorable characters…”

–Kirkus Reviews

'Know thyself’ is a Greek proverb. But what does it mean? How?

Something is missing. But she can’t think what it is. Mysterious art dealer Countess Rivers is jailed in Australia for the traumatic murder she cannot recall. In her adopted, art-world high society life in London, acting the part and role-playing replaced authenticity. Ruby, amnesiac, kept up appearances. Then she and husband Sir Hugo Rivers go to Australia, to collect art. She returns to a past life she forgot. A triangular love affair, Margarita and Raymond, troubled artist; a disappeared friend, love, daughter. What is the significance of the violinist playing Bach’s Contrapunctus 14 that haunts her? Who did what?

Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room is first in a forthcoming series by Ruth Skilbeck exploring silencing, trauma, and identity in postcolonial family life, after-affects of unknown hidden histories and mysteries of self in denial, how one appears to self and others, and the need to go beyond disguise, deception, and reinvention, to find truths of lost self-identity. The author of The Writer’s Fugue, and a cultural essayist, this is her first novel, on an issue of complex significance in global contemporary society.

When is forgetting sale and when is it denial? To forget and move on you need first to remember. In this compelling and original novel, she explores the need to remember and acknowledge the past in order to know truths of identity, lay ghosts, and seek a deeper understanding through the process of art and writing, and justice.

Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room is a fugue fiction novel that interweaves stories of Countess Rivers, jailed art gallery owner, with a range of texts: cases and vignettes on fugue from literary and cultural history, psychology, and medical journals; poetry; dreams; and voices and letters of other characters; unfolding a narrative of what happened in the forgotten time of ‘the Countess’s’ disappearance.

ISBN: 9780992277925 Paperback edition, Published January 7, 2015

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