Author Josephine Rowe’s latest novella LITTLE WORLD (Black Inc 2025) is a literary gem with sparkling and evocative prose, nuanced and unforgettable characters and a suitable amount of ambiguity and complexity to encourage deep thought about profound and universal themes.
Divided into three ‘acts’, with the second act also divided into two, the book explores divinity, humanity, feminism, diversity, loneliness, isolation, self-sufficiency (in both body and spirit), adventure, grief, institutionalisation and preconceived world views, violence, freedom and the quest for self.
The powerful opening concerns a young saint, gifted to a retired engineer living in rural 1950’s Australia. He has no idea how to care for a saint, or indeed any particular beliefs about sainthood but nevertheless he accepts that this is a gift from which he cannot turn away. He doesn’t know it, but the saint has some form of consciousness, and so we are privileged to ‘hear’ or intuit her thoughts about life, her background and history and the forces that have led her to where she is today. The story then moves across continents and eras, with a series of interconnected tales that chart the fates of several other main characters all challenged by their histories, their current situations and their impossible dreams.
LITTLE WORLD is a rich, lush, strange, atmospheric, ethereal story with contemporary and pragmatic sections that cut through the magical with vivid and brutal realities. The idea that something is ‘lucid and sober – and seeming no more implausible than anything else’ captures the heart of this novella. It moves through time and space, and from multiple perspectives, with the gentle and tender warmth of water finding its own level. With the lightest of touches, it approaches issues of great controversy or division or pain or weight, skimming over them with sharp literary prose that piques our appetite but never fully satiates. This is a story of questions rather than answers, of problems not solutions, and of thoughtfulness rather than didactics. A truly beautiful, vibrant, esoteric and strange tale.