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Book Summary and Reviews of Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davidson

Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davidson

Unfinished Woman

A Memoir

by Robyn Davidson

  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Dec 2023, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A spellbinding memoir exploring time and memory, home and belonging, from the internationally bestselling author of Tracks, "an unforgettably powerful book" (Cheryl Strayed).

In 1977, while she was in her twenties, Robyn Davidson set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the sea.

A life of almost constant travelling followed-from the Outback to Sydney's underworld; from sixties street life, to the London literary scene; from migrating with nomads in India and Tibet, to marrying an Indian prince. The only territory she avoided was the past. In Unfinished Woman, she ventures into that unknown, unearthing an ache for a lost but barely remembered mother and an unmet desire to feel at home in her freedom.

Adventurous but guarded, fearless yet broken, Davidson asks: how can we live with pain and uncertainty, to find beauty in the strangeness of being? Unfinished Woman is a stunning literary achievement, inviting readers in as a world-famous wandering spirit is, for the first time, laid truly bare.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Complex ... well-written and insightful." ―Kirkus Reviews

"[Davidson] excavates her childhood, romantic life, and family traumas in this raw and thorny memoir ... Her rueful tone and assertion that her fate often felt like 'the playing out of forces [she] had no hand in' hits hard. It makes for painful yet cathartic reading." ―Publishers Weekly

"Searching, captivating and miraculously honest. Davidson has a voice we want to travel with, and to know." ―Lisa Brennan-Jobs, author of Small Fry

"Immersive and profound, Robyn Davidson's Unfinished Woman is a portal to understanding a daughter's grief. 'We take our mothers into us; that is where they live,' she writes. So much of her mother's life may remain unknown, but through memoir, Davidson completes what she considers an impossible task: crafting a moving portrait of her mother. This book will stay with me." ―Jeannie Vanasco, author of The Glass Eye

"Stunning. Robyn Davidson lives and writes with an explorer's courage, but this book is more than an adventure story. Unfinished Woman is an unfiltered glimpse into the fierce pursuit of freedom and connection, woven with a mother-daughter bond untouchable by time" ―Kendra Atleework, author of Miracle Country

This information about Unfinished Woman was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Mary Garden

Unsalved Wound
Robyn Davidson is best known for her international best seller Tracks about her trek across 2,700 kilometres of Australian desert in 1977. Her new book, Unfinished Woman, tells of another journey, this time into her past. It is mostly, she says, about her mother, who died by suicide in 1961, when the author was 11 years old.

Using a fragmented narrative, Davidson moves back and forth through time, and often circles back to her childhood years in Mooloolah, Queensland. Her mother began to suffer from severe clinical depression and the family moved to Brisbane to be closer to doctors. One afternoon, Davidson came home from school to be told her mother was dead.

Davidson squeezes a lifetime into almost 300 pages and much seems unrelated to her mother, who remained a shadowy figure. The person who stood out for me was her sister, Margaret, who is six years older. Siblings after all are most people’s longest-lasting relationships and can have just as much or more influence on our lives than our parents.

When they were children, Davidson both worshiped and feared her sister. During their fights, Davidson wondered if she would die, but her tears were not from her sister’s punches but her words. ‘Her nails dig into my arm, the air goes out of my stomach, and the sneering, loathing refrain pours down: “useless, ugly, stupid”.’

This seems more than the rough and tumble of sibling rivalry and Davidson is relieved when Margaret goes to boarding school as there would be ‘no more bullying’. Her sister’s contempt leaves a deep mark and, tellingly, Davidson says her desert walk gave her a kind of integration, and ‘proof that “useless ugly stupid” was not all there was.’

Davidson spent several decades overseas, mostly in London and India. She provides few details of her tumultuous relationship with Salman Rushdie in her mid-30s. She gives more details of her partnership with Narendra Singh Bhati, a Rajput aristocrat. He drank heavily daily, but Davidson spurns the use of the term alcoholic (‘a Western concept’, she quips).

Davidson and her sister become estranged as adults. They met up in 1996, but the reunion was not happy. Davidson says her sister’s voice was cold and bitter and vibrated with ‘loathing ? the longing to crush something loathsome.’ Davidson excuses her sister’s anger and says Margaret is acting out of her own loss and grieving.

A fascinating book, but I felt increasingly frustrated by Davidson’s rationalizing and excusing of bad behaviours.

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Author Information

Robyn Davidson

Robyn Davidson was born on a cattle property in Queensland. She went to Sydney in the late sixties, then returned to study in Brisbane before going to Alice Springs where the events of her book, Unfinished Woman began. Since then she has travelled extensively, has lived in London, New York and India. In the early 1990's she migrated with and wrote about nomads in north west India. She is now based in Melbourne, but spends several months a year in the Indian Himalayas.

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