Her body hurts her all the time now. It is separate, a thing apart. In her mind it has become a person or an object that is not quite her, that she doesn’t know.
Vera and Thea are mother and daughter. Vera writes for the internet: she constructs identities and scenarios for brands to cater to the ideal consumer. Yet she also consumes the offerings of the online world herself: the addictive pursuit of a cure, the narratives she craves in which mother and daughter find a way out of the shared experience of chronic illness. She becomes preoccupied with a blog written by a woman named Claudia, a mother whose daughter also has a chronic illness.
While on holiday in Italy, Thea writes in her journal. She is also constructing a character: an image of herself as she grapples with having the same illness as her mother, Vera. But gradually another person emerges in her journal, through her imaginings of her mother in the same house, the same city, at the same age. They have come to Italy to see where Vera’s family originates, but also to chase a promised cure in the form of a man said to be able to heal Thea’s illness.
As they both grapple with their own narratives about their bodies and their wellness, all may not be as it seems. Perhaps a story does not necessarily need to be true for us to believe in it?
About the Author
Katherine Brabon is the award-winning author of the novels The Memory Artist, The Shut Ins and Body Friend. Her work has received the Vogel's Literary Award, a NSW Premier's Literary Award and the David Harold Tribe Fiction Award. Her third novel, Body Friend, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the ALS Gold Medal and the University of Queensland Fiction Book Award. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.
Industry Reviews
‘a gloriously distinctive writer: brava, brava!’ - Michelle de Kretser, Miles Franklin award-winning author of The Life to Come and Theory & Practice
‘Cure lures you in with mesmeric prose then startles with profound insights on pain, faith, motherhood and, above all, love.’ - Diana Reid, bestselling author of Love & Virtue and Signs of Damage
‘An utterly joyful reading experience. I inhaled it.’ - Jessie Tu, bestselling author of A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing and The Honeyeater
‘Brabon’s elegant, poetic prose is transporting; she probes our human vulnerabilities with deep insight, empathy, and restraint. Cure is timely and entirely compelling.’ - Sarah Holland-Batt, Stella Prize-winning author of The Jaguar
‘an eerie dream of a book.’ - Madeleine Watts, author of The Inland Sea and Elegy, Southwest
‘A tender, delicately woven story that explores the boundaries between a mother and daughter who both live with chronic illness. Sharply intelligent and deeply felt, Cure has much to say about the unreliability of the body, the alienating nature of pain, and the cacophony of voices – scientific, religious, online – offering comfort, promising relief. An intimate and imaginative novel about family, faith, and the healing power of human connection.’ - Kylie Needham, author of Girl in a Pink Dress
‘Accomplished, gentle and illuminating.’ - Alice Bishop, author of A Constant Hum
‘Cure is a timely look at our preoccupation with wellness. Brabon's poetics around the body and female constructions of self and identity and myth are breathtaking.’ - Kavita Bedford, author of Friends and Dark Shapes
'I read it with pleasure and admiration. As with Body Friend, I was struck by the distilled wisdom of Katherine’s meditation on the power - and treachery - of the narratives we create. She’s a gloriously distinctive writer: brava, brava!'
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