Michelle de Kretser’s latest novel, Theory & Practice, opens as a conventional fiction narrative, but soon after it begins is abruptly interrupted by the narrator. Cindy proceeds to reflect on her life, first as a child in Sri Lanka and then as a young woman living in Melbourne in 1986 and tackling post graduate study on her idol, Virginia Woolf whom she calls ‘Woolfmother’.  As her studies progress, she struggle with Woolf’s flawed humanity and contradictions between her progressive public persona and her private racism and pretentiousness.

Instead of shapeliness and disguise, I wanted a form that allowed for formlessness and mess. It occurred to me that one way to find that form might be to tell the truth

For those of us who were of University age in the mid 80s when education was free, the work is both familiar and compelling. It was a time when learning was seeped in theories about how we ought to live, while life was experimental and relationships were complicated. This tension between what we believe about how we should live, and how we actually live runs throughout the story as our protagonist’s feminist ideals clash with her lived experience. But as humans we often abandon our moral principles in pursuit of self-interest.

While trusting in feminism’s transformative power, I retained a stubborn, dazed belief in love.

Cindy becomes friends with a couple called Kit and Olivia. Cindy and Kit become lovers and Cindy develops a distant and jealous dynamic with Olivia, behaviour that defies her feminist principles. Meanwhile she contends with a constant stream of passive-aggressive messages from her widowed mother who lives in Sydney and continues to exert maternal influence making Cindy feel guilty for leaving her to move to Melbourne.

I was twenty-four. The first thing I did in Melbourne was buy a vintage dress. The dress was made of lace, and had cap sleeves, an empire waist and a fitted knee-length skirt. It dated from the early sixties, when thousands of its kind must have been made. Now fashion had plucked it from oblivion and filled it with warm young bodies again. Powder-blue and rose and coffee-cream variants existed, but my dress was Intellectual Black.

Theory & Practice is unsentimental and bristling with the anxiety of youth. Fiction and non fiction collide throughout this novel which defies conventional form, blending fiction, essay and memoir.  Themes include identity, displacement, feminism and colonialism. Highly recommended, especially if you enjoy unconventional narratives and remember the 80’s.