7.2 /10 1 Votes
Country Australia Publication date 2004 Pages 302 pp Preceded by Pieces of a Girl | 3.6/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Paperback) Originally published 2004 Genre Novel OCLC 57169214 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publisher Vintage Books, Australia Similar Pieces of a Girl, Animal People, Love and Hunger: Thoughts, The Natural Way of Th, Remembering for Both of Us: A Chil | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Submerged Cathedral is a 2004 novel by Australian author Charlotte Wood.
Contents
Plot
Marie and Simone, friends for decades, were once immigrants to the city, survivors of World War II in Europe. Now widows living alone in Chelsea, they remain robust, engaged, and adventurous, even as the vistas from their past interrupt their present. Helen is an art historian who takes a painting class with Marie and Simone. Sid Morris, their instructor, presides over a dusty studio in a tenement slated for condo conversion; he awakes the interest of both Simone and Marie. Elizabeth is Marie’s upstairs tenant, a woman convinced that others have a secret way of being, a confidence and certainty she lacks. She is increasingly unmoored—baffled by her teenage son, her husband, and the roles she is meant to play.
In a chorus of voices, Kate Walbert, a “wickedly smart, gorgeous writer” (The New York Times Book Review), explores the growing disconnect between the world of action her characters inhabit and the longings, desires, and doubts they experience. Interweaving long narrative footnotes, Walbert paints portraits of marriage, of friendship, and of love in its many facets, always limning the inner life, the place of deepest yearning and anxiety. The Sunken Cathedral is a stunningly beautiful, profoundly wise novel about the way we live now.}