Slow burner

Annamarie Jagose’s Slow Water – the tale of a gradual unravelling of English class systems and sexual identities on a voyage to colonial NZ – praised in the SMH. “The book has a wide emotional range. It is also written in unpragmatically ornate prose. At times, Jagose’s prose is exacting; at other times, delightful. But it’s a slow trip. Jagose wants to communicate a lot more than the facts of the matter. And that takes time.”