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A SPINIFEX FEMINIST CLASSIC

Remember The Tarantella is a remarkable work. It's learned and frivolous, female not feminine, silly and serious. Written in several strands of narrative, the many characters create a space as if reading were a dance party. Story is not the main objective. Private conversations and thoughts are always within earshot of the rhythm of others, like the stamping of feet and the beat of the music. This is concerto-like poetry; many instruments of different tones assist the reader to know who is who.

The tarantella of the title is the ruse of women who did not want to be burnt as witches. At the reputed bite of the spider, they dance themselves into the sea and disappear. Moorhead's Remember The Tarantella is truly a work of feminist fiction. A delight, to be read again and again, as one would listen to music over and over.

It started with a challenge from the late Christina Stead: it’s very difficult to make an interesting novel with no men in it at all.

Released  to acclaim in 1987, Remember the Tarantella was heralded as a great work of feminist fiction. Twenty four years later the prose continues to have a fresh and contemporary feel.

This new editiom has cover art by Suzanne Bellamy (“Starship” porcelain 1989), and includes an Afterword, interview with the author and novelist Sue Woolfe about the making of Remember the Tarantella, complete with diagrams and extracts from early drafts. (The interview was first published in Making Stories: How ten Australian novels by Sue Woolfe and Kate Grenville, A&U, 2001.)