The Weekend
Charlotte Wood

The Weekend
Charlotte Wood
Four older women with a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?
Review
by Clare Millar
Charlotte Wood is an accomplished Australian writer. She won the 2016 Stella Prize for her feminist dystopian novel The Natural Way of Things, which received many other awards as well.
The Weekend follows three women in their seventies: Jude, a retired restaurateur; Wendy, an academic and public intellectual, and Adele, an out-of-work actress. This is a slow-paced but dreamy beach novel, examining, closely, details of friendships. Wood skilfully weaves in each woman’s perspective, allowing focus on their anxieties of growing old, losing their sense of purpose, and questioning why they have remained friends over many decades when they irritate each other so much.
The Weekend is in many ways a different story to The Natural Way of Things, one without hot anger and sexual tensions. But is a book that simmers away, tensions waxing and waning as the friends spend the Christmas weekend together clearing out a beach house after their friend Sylvie dies. ‘Take anything you want’ is what Sylvie’s partner says, but clearing out the house becomes much more about connecting with each other than the material objects in the house. Long-held secrets create tension between the friends. Christmas looms but is almost uncelebrated.
Although the themes may be very different to her last book, Wood’s strength continues in her writing style – clear and visceral descriptions in punchy paragraphs. Jude, Wendy and Adele have their own clear voices and preoccupations: Wendy’s concern for her arthritic dog, a gift from Sylvie; Adele’s obsessions over how she presents herself and how she might find more acting work; and Jude’s stress over keeping everything organised – including her long-term affair with a married man. Wood has written a novel that beautifully realises the voices of older women in Australian literature.
Clare Millar works as a bookseller at Readings Hawthorn.
This item is in-stock and will ship in 2-3 business days
We are currently experiencing delays in processing and delivering online orders. Click here for more information.
Please note, our stock data is updated overnight, and availability may change throughout the day. Prices are subject to change without notice.Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.

The Vanishing Half
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

A Burning
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

See What You Made Me Do
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Animals in That Country
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Weekend
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Olive, Again
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Throat
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Element
Using chemistry as an indexing trope, Jordie Albiston tabulates the human predicament of love: its foundations and fundamentals, its configuration of emotions, its recurring properties and its inherent assumption of many as yet...
$25.00Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Nganajungu Yagu
An award-winning work of poetry from Charmaine Papertalk Green.
$20.00Buy now
Finding stock availability...

There Was Still Love
The profoundly moving new novel from the critically acclaimed and Miles Franklin shortlisted author of Past the Shallows and When the Night Comes. A tender and masterfully told story of memory, family and love.
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Exploded View
A fearless and masterful novel from the Stella Prize-winning author Carrie Tiffany, now in a new paperback edition
$22.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Weekend
The brilliant new novel from Charlotte Wood, acclaimed author of The Natural Way of Things .
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The White Girl
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Act of Grace
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Room for a Stranger
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Islands
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Yield
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Weekend
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Returns
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Exploded View
$22.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...