Very Impressive for Your Age (Eleanor Kirk, A&U)

In Very Impressive for Your Age, Eleanor Kirk brings insight, wit and dark humour to her sharply drawn portrait of a young woman whose carefully imagined future vanishes overnight. Evelyn is 26 and on the cusp of fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming an international opera star in London until the unthinkable happens. During a lead performance at one of Europe’s most prestigious opera houses, her voice suddenly disappears. With no cure in sight, she is forced to return to her childhood home in Sydney, the city she thought she’d left behind for good. She insists she’s just taking a break to rest and recover, but deep down she’s devastated – grieving not just the loss of her voice, but also of her identity. Evelyn’s story is one of existential limbo, rendered with nuance and care. She’s ambivalent, angry, sad and unsure of who she is without her career, not always likeable but recognisable in way that feels emotionally familiar. While midlife crises are familiar territory in contemporary fiction, Kirk’s exploration of a quarter-life unravelling feels fresh. With sly intelligence and emotional precision, she resists tidy resolutions in favour of something far more honest: a portrait of the destabilising grief that can come with losing the life you thought you were meant to live. An assured, insightful debut for fans of Madeleine Gray’s Green Dot or Joseph Earp’s Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated. 

Books+Publishing reviewer: Heidi Maier has a PhD in women's studies and literature. She has been an arts and literary writer and reviewer for more than 20 years. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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