The Puzzleheaded Girl

`Christina Stead’s talent is vital and powerful; her work has that original streak of genius so evident in the best Australian writing.’ * Sunday Times * `I cannot see how anyone can deny Miss Stead's position as the most extraordinary woman novelist produced by the English-speaking race since Virginia Woolf.’ * New Yorker * `Stead is of that category of fiction writer who restores to us the entire world, in its infinite complexity and inexorable bitterness, and never asks if the reader wishes to be so furiously enlightened and instructed, but takes it for granted that this is the function of fiction.’ -- Angela Carter * London Review of Books * 'Stead effortlessly captures the feel of the era she is describing, with spare and beautiful prose.’ * BookMooch * `I loved the Text Classic reissue of Christina Stead’s The Puzzleheaded Girl, a kind of female version of Bartleby the Scrivener. Stead’s gifts are so ample, her grasp of obsession extraordinary.’ -- Delia Falconer * Australian * `These are perfectly pitched stories of flight.’ * Australian Financial Review * `At shorter length, Stead reveals more clearly her gifts in tone and voice and building a scene, while her theme here puts these fictions among the Ur-texts of feminism.’ * Kirkus Reviews, starred review *