Daisy and Woolf

'This is where I begin. This blank page draws me nearer to you, the day sweltering, my courage quickens, the curtains billowing and the punkah swaying, the punkah rattling as I sit at my writing bureau ... it is a soothing sound.'

Mina, a writer, is navigating her place in the world, balancing creativity, academia, her sexuality and the expectation that a wife and mother abandons herself for others. For her, like so many women of mixed ancestry, it is too easy to be erased. But her fire and intellect refuse to bow. She discovers 'the dark, adorable' Eurasian woman Daisy Simmons, whom Peter Walsh plans to marry in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Daisy disappeared from Woolf's pages, her story unfinished - never given a voice in the novel, nor a footnote in any of the admiring Woolf scholarship that followed.

While dealing with the remains of another life, Mina decides to write Daisy's story. Travelling from Australia to England, India and China, freelancing and researching, she has to navigate cultural and race barriers, trying hard not to look back or flinch at the personal cost. Like Woolf, her writing both sustains and overwhelms her. But in releasing Daisy from her fictional destiny, Mina finds the stubbornness and strength to also break free.

'An elegant meditation on race, class and privilege ... Daisy and Woolf not only brings us stories of brave, clever women in an eloquent way, it also leaves questions for us readers to think of our own trajectory of reading and influences' ArtsHub

'Cahill writes beautifully ... Daisy and Woolf is a novel about reclamation. Highlighting the inadvertent racism inherent in much of the classical literary canon, it reinforces the the importance of Own Voices writing, and shines a light on the lives of people of colour that cannot be understood or expressed without their input' The Age

'an impressive, ambitious postmodern novel that raises questions around race, class, feminism, Empire, the post-colonial voice and so much more ... a fascinating work, it's rare to see something of its kind in the Australian literary landscape' Readings

PRAISE FOR MICHELLE CAHILL:

'Her deftness and linguistic grace masks her purpose, till she reveals a shocking glimpse of the price that art can exact' - HILARY MANTEL

'Traverses centuries, cultures and continents to deftly explore how race, gender and class have the power to shape a narrative' - MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE

'A dauntless novel of empire, and its ever-replicating costs. There are echoes of Michael Ondaatje in this novel's lush and observant prose-craft. This is fiction at its most human and humane' - BEEJAY SILCOX

'In lu

“There is passion and anger in Cahill's writing, as she unpacks the ways in which people of colour have been, and continue to be, undermined in literature and in life.-- Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen , VIC [PRINT] The Saturday Age [AUDIENCE: 241,029, ASR: 24,612]”

Michelle Cahill's debut novel tells the story of a struggling writer, Mina, as she expands upon the often disregarded character Daisy Simmons from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Daisy & Woolf follows in the tradition of Jean Rhys's exploration of Charlotte Brontë's Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea, with Cahill's protagonist endeavouring to write Daisy as a three-dimensional character in contrast to the fleeting mentions of her given in the source material. Mina's research takes her around the world despite her dwindling funds and increasingly precarious footing in her own life. Although written in response to Mrs Dalloway, Cahill's novel critiques Woolf's white feminism and the racist judgements evident in her work, and how these led her to 'slay' Daisy in the novel. Cahill also goes further, criticising the publishing industry at large, with Mina condemning the industry's tendency to focus on novels such as her own as symbols of resilience, rather than simply examining characters like Daisy in their own right. In taking on the unknown world and life of Daisy from the perspective of a writer from a similar ethnic background, Cahill organically includes discussion around the pressures faced by writers of colour and how 'the voice of whoever speaks determines the storytelling'. Entangling the queer subtext of Mrs Dalloway with both Mina and Daisy's lives, Daisy & Woolf also expertly parallels the nuances of Woolf's life and work. Told in a mix of alternating epistolary and stream-of-consciousness formats, this novel will appeal to lovers of Virginia Woolf and The Hours, as well as anyone interested in the art of writing. Marina Sano is a bookseller and owner of Amplify Bookstore.

Michelle Cahill is an Australian novelist and poet of Indian heritage. Her short story collection, Letter to Pessoa (Giramondo) was awarded the NSW Premier's Literary Award for New Writing, shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Award and longlisted in the ALS Gold Medal. Her novel Daisy & Woolf is longlisted in the ALS Gold Medal. She has been shortlisted in the Elizabeth Jolley Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, and received the Val Vallis Award and a Red Room Poetry Fellowship. In 2023 she takes up the Hedberg Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania.

'This is where I begin. This blank page draws me nearer to you, the day sweltering, my courage quickens, the curtains billowing and the punkah swaying, the punkah rattling as I sit at my writing bureau ... it is a soothing sound.' Mina , a writer, is navigating her place in the world, balancing creativity, academia, her sexuality and the expectation that a wife and mother abandons herself for others. For her, like so many women of mixed ancestry, it is too easy to be erased. But her fire and intellect refuse to bow. She discovers 'the dark, adorable' Eurasian woman Daisy Simmons , whom Peter Walsh plans to marry in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Daisy disappeared from Woolf's pages, her story unfinished - never given a voice in the novel, nor a footnote in any of the admiring Woolf scholarship that followed.While dealing with the remains of another life, Mina decides to write Daisy's story. Travelling from Australia to England, India and China, freelancing and researching, she has to navigate cultural and race barriers, trying hard not to look back or flinch at the personal cost. Like Woolf, her writing both sustains and overwhelms her. But in releasing Daisy from her fictional destiny, Mina finds the stubbornness and strength to also break free.'An elegant meditation on race, class and privilege ... Daisy and Woolf not only brings us stories of brave, clever women in an eloquent way, it also leaves questions for us readers to think of our own trajectory of reading and influences' ArtsHub 'Cahill writes beautifully ... Daisy and Woolf is a novel about reclamation. Highlighting the inadvertent racism inherent in much of the classical literary canon, it reinforces the the importance of Own Voices writing, and shines a light on the lives of people of colour that cannot be understood or expressed without their input' The Age 'an impressive, ambitious postmodern novel that raises questions around race, class, feminism, Empire, the post-colonial voice and so much more ... a fascinating work, it's rare to see something of its kind in the Australian literary landscape' Readings PRAISE FOR MICHELLE CAHILL: 'Her deftness and linguistic grace masks her purpose, till she reveals a shocking glimpse of the price that art can exact' - HILARY MANTEL 'Traverses centuries, cultures and continents to deftly explore how race, gender and class have the power to shape a narrative' - MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE 'A dauntless novel of empire, and its ever-replicating costs. There are echoes of Michael Ondaatje in this novel's lush and observant prose-craft. This is fiction at its most human and humane' - BEEJAY SILCOX 'In lu

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