Theory & Practice

The book received generally positive reviews. Reviewing the book in The Atlantic, Sophia Stewart described it as "sly, spiky, and brilliant".^[4] In a review published in the New York Times Review of Books, Emily Eakin wrote that the book was a "taut, enthralling hybrid of fact and fiction impossible to disentangle".^[5] The book received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which described it as "sharp-witted and mesmerizing", while a review in Kirkus Reviews described it as a "ferociously intelligent novel from a writer at the height of her powers".^[6][7]

Reviewers praised the novel's unconventional construction, with Jack Callil writing in The Guardian that the book "push[es] the margins of what a novel can look and feel like".^[8] De Kretser weaves non-fiction elements into the narrative, using the book's construction to experiment with narrative form and structure. Eva Gunaydin wrote in The Conversation that the book "uses a hybrid form to comment on form itself", while Eakin wrote in the New York Times Review of Books that the novel was "a bold experiment in form".^[9] Reviewers also praised the way in which the book circled back to the initial, fragmented narrative with which it began.^[10] Tim Adams wrote in a review in The Guardian that "it is a measure of De Kretser’s beguiling talent as a novelist that she holds both these tales in balance without the whole ever threatening to fall apart".^[11]

Reviewers also commented on de Kretser's critique of the "inevitable breakdowns between theory and practice".^[12][4] In a review in the Los Angeles Times, Jessica Ferri praised de Kretser's ability to grapple with this tension, writing that the novel is "like a coming-of-age novel or perhaps a coming-to-writing novel" and that it is "anything but conventional...it is something new, born of the recognition between holding two truths in mind at once".^[13] In a review in Australian Book Review, Nicole Abadee wrote that De Kretser "deplores the damage that an overly enthusiastic embrace of theory has wrought on the humanities", and that the book is adept at "showing without telling the 'messy gap' and the 'breakdowns' between theory and practice".^[14]

Reviewers also praised de Kretser for her nuanced exploration of race and gender. The novel's narrator grapples with the racist statements of Virginia Woolf, who she describes as her "Woolfmother" and with whom she feels a type of maternal connection, but feels constrained by the expectation that she limit her research to Woolf's novels and separate the author's public work from her private attitudes.^[15][5] Gunaydin wrote in The Conversation that de Kretser "captures the betrayals, jealousies and failures of sisterhood".^[9] In a review in the Financial Times, Catherine Taylor describes the book as a deconstructionist work that "tackles colonialism, gender politics and the slippery bond between mother figures and daughters".^[16]