The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. Most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.
With extraordinary echoes of
The Handmaid’s Tale and
Lord of the Flies,
The Natural Way of Things is a compulsively readable, scarifying and deeply moving contemporary novel. It confirms Charlotte Wood’s position as one of our most thoughtful, provocative and fearless truth-tellers, as she unflinchingly reveals us and our world to ourselves.
‘It feels at times like a nightmare; but one in which women make serious pacts, take serious pleasures, and reimagine what it might mean to live in the world. I feel as if I’ve been witness to the most terrible injustice, but also the most astonishing beauty.’
Fiona McFarlane, author of Highway 13
‘Exposing the threads of misogyny, cowardice and abuses of power embedded in contemporary society, this is a confronting, sometimes deeply painful novel to read. With an unflinching eye and audacious imagination, Wood carries us from a nightmare of helplessness and despair to a fantasy of revenge and reckoning.’
The Guardian
‘It’s rare to pick up a novel and from the opening pages be not only gripped by the story on the page but also by the keenness of the intelligence and audacity of the imagination at work … one hell of a novel by one of our most original and provocative writers.’
Stephen Romei, The Weekend Australian
