Cure

(Paperback)

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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 insightson 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, bestelling author of A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing and The Honeyeater

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 doesnt 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 Veras family originates, but also to chase a promised cure in the form of a man said to be able to heal Theas illness.

As they both grapple with their own narrativesabout 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

PRAISE FOR CURE:

Brabons elegant, poetic prose is transporting; she probes our human vulnerabilities with deep insight, empathy, and restraint. Cureis 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, Curehas 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 andDark Shapes

Reviews

'I read it with pleasure and admiration. As with Body Friend, I was struck by the distilled wisdom of Katherines meditation on the power - and treachery - of the narratives we create. Shes 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 insightson pain, faith, motherhood and, above all, love.' * Diana Reid, bestselling author of Love & Virtue and Signs of Damage *

'Cure is a spectacular account of our desperate pursuit of happiness through good health, and the failure of that, the unreliability of our female bodies and the grief of this unreliability.

Brabons prose moves like a symphony, taking us through the singular transition from adolescence to womanhood a transitory period, told in a quiet, elliptical tone. The novel explores our relationship between illness and identity with a sense of urgency and detachment, while charting the burden of daughterhood and the inextricable ties we have with our mothers.

An utterly joyful reading experience. I inhaled it.'

* Jessie Tu, bestselling author of A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing and The Honeyeater *
'A delicate, atmospheric story about the spidery threads of connection between daughters and our mothers, the hazy space between one body and another, between sickness and health, surrender and control. Katherine Brabon has written an eerie dream of a book.' * Madeleine Watts, author of The Inland Sea and Elegy, Southwest *
'In this age of algorithmically-induced anxieties about our bodies, Katherine Brabons Cureasks profound questions about what it really means to seek a cure for illnessand to learn to accept our mortal condition. I was mesmerised by the meditative, dreamlike worlds of Vera and Thea, whose dual quests for wellness show us how the psychology of hope can be just as damaging as resignation or despair. Brabons elegant, poetic prose is transporting; she probes our human vulnerabilities with deep insight, empathy, and restraint. Cureis timely and entirely compelling.' * Sarah Holland-Batt, Stella Prize-winning author of The Jaguar *
'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. She writes with a cool elegance about what it means to be well; that it is somehow within our reach and control, and how if it cannot be attained, it feels like a failure of self. An eerie and compelling read.'

* Kavita Bedford, author of Friends & Dark Shapes *

Author Bio

Katherine Brabonis the award-winning author of the novelsThe Memory Artist,The Shut InsandBody Friend. Her work has received the Vogels Literary Award, a NSW Premiers 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.