The Ruin of Magic: Longing and Belonging in Strange Times

In The Ruin of Magic, award-winning writer Kate Holden follows in the footsteps of Katherine May, Maggie Nelson and Andre Aciman, crafting essays of intimate personal experience and sharply informed rumination on life in strange times.

In gorgeous prose Holden meditates on her instinctive yearning for long-ago Europe versus the natural belonging she feels to the Australian landscape, and asks, What is a home? The strongest shelter or the most lethal trap, a museum of ourselves or a showcase of fashions? What, then, does it mean to make ourselves at home in an Australia still finding its way amidst old and avoided truths? Is nostalgia a reasonable mourning of timeless lore lost or a dangerous fantasy? And what has happened to magic and beauty in the glare of modern life?