Amy Brown’s New Novel Inspired by Women and Art

Like many writers before her, New Zealand-born Amy Brown takes inspiration from the Australian feminist icon Stella Maria Miles Franklin in her captivating debut novel My Brilliant Sister – but instead of telling Franklin’s story, the novel focuses on three women whose lives carry direct and indirect echoes of her: Ida, Linda and Stella. Bec Kavanagh reviews the novel for The Guardian.

“The story of these three characters – two in the present, one in the past – is told over three separate parts, which together offer a thoughtful reflection on the domestic and creative ambitions of women in Australia,” Kavanagh writes.

“Women’s stories and the significance of their interior lives are too often dismissed as narcissistic navel gazing. In My Brilliant Sister, Brown, like Franklin, like many other peers and predecessors, celebrates the kind of egotism that allows women to see themselves as significant, and their stories – creative, domestic and otherwise – as worthwhile.”

Melbourne-based Brown is originally from Hawkes Bay. She completed her PhD on contemporary epic poetry at the University of Melbourne in 2012.

Original article by Bec Kavanagh, The Guardian, February 15, 2024.