This Devastating Fever
by Sophie Cunningham
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Pub Date 2 Mar 2023 | Archive Date 31 Mar 2023
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Description
'This Devastating Fever is a very good novel.’ – Howard Jacobson, New Statesman
'I loved this book. I absolutely loved it.’ – Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap and Barracuda
'This is a great novel of enduring significance and enormous beauty.’ – Sydney Morning Herald
Sometimes you need to delve into the past, to make sense of the present.
Alice had not expected to spend most of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: is Y2K going to be a thing? Y2K was not a thing. But there were worse disasters to come. Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague.
Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury Set becomes something else altogether. Complex, heartfelt, darkly funny and deeply moving, this is a dazzlingly original novel about what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.
Advance Praise
‘This is a great novel of enduring significance and enormous beauty.’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘a very moving novel, laced with wit, pathos, and ferocious truths’
The Australian
’Extinction, climate change, the pandemic, love and loss are all there in this vital, virtuoso candle in a jar for eternity.’
Australian Women’s Weekly
‘This Devastating Fever is both timely and timeless, a sophisticated work of fiction that addresses the anxieties of the present moment as well as the most profound questions of history, art, love and loss. A magnificent novel.’
EmilyBitto, author of The Strays and Wild Abandon
‘It takes a phenomenal control of craft, and a keenly honed intelligence, to do what Cunningham has done with this novel: to interrogate politics and art and culture, to take on love and sex and suffering and loyalty, while all the while ensuring that the reader remains buoyant and captivated by narratives that leap across space and time … I loved this book. I absolutely loved it.’
Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap and 7 ½
‘Deeply humane, full of humour, and delightfully gossipy about the sex lives of the Bloomsbury Group, This Devastating Fever is innovative in format, chatty in tone and will seduce readers with its simple, direct voice.’
Books+Publishing
‘Angry and enthralling, this novel challenges the reader’s understanding of what a novel might be.’
The Saturday Paper
‘bold, cheeky, playfully energetic and utterly distinctive’
Guardian
‘This Devastating Fever is thrillingly audacious fiction. Sophie Cunningham’s entwined subjects are profound – Leonard Woolf and colonialism, the crises of the present day, the challenges of creative work – and she writes commandingly and inventively about them all. The result is an extraordinary novel.’
Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel and Scary Monsters
‘a triumph of tone and lightness’
Miles Allinson, author of In Moonland
‘a masterfully told story of intertwined literary lives, old and new’
The Canberra Times
‘[Cunningham’s] prose crackles and spits with a quintessentially Australian wryness, and soars when depicting the natural world in all of the novel’s vibrantly drawn locales (Australia, England and Sri Lanka)’
South China Morning Post
‘This Devastating Fever is remarkable: a thrillingly original, deeply emotional exploration of the complex echoes of history set in the shadow of the looming catastrophe of the future. Sinuous, strange, utterly compelling, it is like no other book you’ll read this year.’
James Bradley, author of Ghost Species and The Resurrectionist
‘Brilliant and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It draws on archived letters and diary entries and the edges of what is real and what is imagined are delightfully blurred. It’s sharply layered, clever and darkly, dryly hilarious.’
Eliza Henry-Jones, author of Salt and Skin and In the Quiet
‘A book of big ideas that reads as a page turner. I was thrilled to keep returning to the page.’
Kate Mildenhall, author of Skylarking and The Mother Fault
‘This Devastating Fever left me with a sense of wonder at how nature, art, love and learning from the past can sustain us. Truly wonderful reading that brings Leonard Woolf alive.’
Good Reading
‘a deft, original novel that is clearly going to prompt many conversations’
The Booklist
‘an ambitious, empathetic, funny and intelligent book. Cunningham understands something profound about the complex yearnings of the human heart, and her writing about the natural world is exquisite.’
Readings Monthly
‘This Devastating Fever is an extraordinary achievement.’
Kill Your Darlings
‘A new novel that’s sure to make you feel a little bit better about living through the end times.’
Pedestrian
‘This Devastating Fever contains the joy and pain and terror of caring deeply for another living thing: whether a loved one whose mind is failing, or cicadas destined to be incinerated in the Black Summer fires. It is also about the need to read carefully, write carefully, and think carefully – about the past and how we respond to it, and about what we owe the dead, the living, and the future.’
The Conversation
‘This Devastating Fever feels a bit like a blast from the past and in the best way possible.’
The Urban List
‘I can honestly say this isn’t like any book I have ever read before, yet couldn’t put down.’
Russh Magazine
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781761151576 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 320 |
Links
Featured Reviews
Sandra T, Reviewer
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Publication date: 2 March 2023
~~~~~
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.5 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Ultimo Press for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
~~~~~
Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf.
Uncertain of what to do, she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past.
~~~~~
I absolutely loved the blurring of the edges between fiction and non-fiction in this novel due to our main character Alice's painstaking research into Leonard Woolf's life (and by extension, Virginia Woolf's life) in the archives of many libraries around the world.
The story jumps around quite a bit; we start in 1936 with Leonard, then 2020 with Alice, then off to 1910 with Leonard before being back to 2004 with Alice, and this keeps going for the whole of the book. I don't mind this at all as I'm a fan of dual or multiple timelines. Leonard is our witness to the first half of the 20th century and Alice, to the first quarter of the 21st and it allows the author to draw parallels between those times: colonialism and its repercussions nowadays, conflicts and wars, natural/ecological disasters and diseases/pandemics.
There were some very painful and poignant moments about seeing someone you love in the clutches of a mental illness or a degenerative disease and feeling hopeless and helpless to help, reinforcing the unseen bond across the decades between Leonard and Alice.
Which is why it never felt bizarre to me that Alice should be visited by Leonard's ghost at first, before Virginia's ghost also needed to be heard. Those interactions made for some humorous, but also quite heartbreaking, moments in the story.
I requested this book on a whim after only one recommendation (thank you @savidgereads) and I'm so glad I did as I thought it was amazing.
~~~~~
Helen K, Reviewer
I have rather eclectic reading tastes I tend to jump around the genres and so I suspect that is why this genre defying novel appealed so much to me when it was brought to my attention by @savidgereads in his @womensprize prediction video.
Part historical biography/ fictional reimagining of the life of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, part true account of Cunningham writing said book about the Woolfs told through a fictional author named Alice. Alice is struggling to finish the book to the standard of her editor, a book which takes decades to write. The time to write encompasses the fears of Y2K, Australian bush fires, climate crisis and covid pandemic. As Alice descends further into her writing the ghosts of Leonard and Virginia start to appear to question and challenge her understanding and artistic directions.
I appreciate that all sounds rather strange but Cunningham has cleverly woven it all together into a fascinating and thought provoking novel but also one that’s easy and enjoyable to read.
This will hold huge interest to those interested in history of literature and the Bloomsbury early scenes, once again I’m questioning why despite owning a few I’ve yet to pick up a book written by Woolf. Worst still there are so many references both in the historical and modern day chapters I came away with a long list of books to add to my wishlist.
Some of my favourite parts were the interactions between Alice and the ghosts, these were both amusing and helped to tie up the historical and modern sections. Whilst sounding implausible I actually took these sections to be occurring in Alice’s head as she became more enclosed in her writing and they made me ponder about the obsession required for artists.
Very clever and also timely, it provokes questions both with the reader and on a wider scale, this would be an interesting book club read there’s lots to unpick! Thank you @ultimopress and @netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
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