Thunderhead

A black comedy, set in suburbia, about one woman's struggle to be free.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that 'tiny tornado of little hands and feet', wake up—she doesn't know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.

On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother—unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise.

And meanwhile, a storm is brewing...

Thunderhead is edgy black comedy and sports a real-time internal monologue meticulously describing one day of domestic purgatory... Darling's whip-smart short novel creates a strong narrative voice spiked with caustic wit, intertextual reference, and intelligent humour. It's formidably brilliant feminist fiction that sparks a compelling conversation with its literary forebears, Woolf in particular.

-Cameron Woodhead, The Sydney Morning Herald

Set over one fever-pitched day... It's a daring book, adopting the aesthetics of Deborah Levy with the velocity of a crime thriller and an off-kilter voice, deeply internal, darkly comic, clipped and Woolf-ish... Thunderhead brims with magazine-style musings—all those dizzying top notes, that intertextuality, the style. It's a strong, complex and self-aware voice, and it is the primary vehicle through which we gauge Winona's resilience and determination. If The Catcher in the Rye were instead penned by a domestic violence survivor, it might read a little like Thunderhead. For fans of Melissa Broder, Elizabeth Hardwick and Edwina Preston.

-Mel Fulton, Books+Publishing

A feminist triumph and homage to Virginia Woolf, Miranda Darling's Thunderhead is a potent exploration of suburban entrapment for women.

-Cassandra Atherton, Australian Book Review