The responsibilities of being: Jessica Au’s precise, poetic meditation on mothers and daughters

Au’s new book has already won the inaugural Novel Prize, and been published in fifteen languages. It provides instead a sort of pentimento made of words, all allusion and invocation. It is like a poem or, as many critics have said about this book, a meditation. They have offered phrases like “beautifully observed”, “hypnotic”, “calm simplicity”, and (from Helen Garner): “So calm and clear and deep, I wished it would flow on forever”.