If You Go

‘If You Go reminds me of Annie Ernaux, although it’s fiction. It shows how much women carry without acknowledgement.’ ALICE BISHOP ‘An eerie and evocative rendering of the complexities of motherhood set against the backdrop of a collapsed world. This visceral novel packs a punch.’ JESSIE COLE ‘If You Go is an absorbing and terrifying novel about a woman altered by time and her enduring love for her children. Robinson’s depictions of Esther’s grief and artistic life are painful, fascinating and beautiful in equal measure.’ LAURA ELVERY ‘If You Go has the sense of something deeply personal and otherworldly. It felt like an intensely personal conversation with me, as a reader, but also with the whole world in all its chaos.’ KATE MILDENHALL ‘A tightly woven, emotionally charged, brutally honest fable. If You Go is a gripping climate thriller and a deeply feminist portrait of motherhood and its complex ferocities. An utterly compelling vision of the future: intricate, clever and fearless.’ JENNIFER MILLS Alice Robinson charts not only the difficult dark places between mothers and children, but those between mothers and themselves. If You Go moved me with the pain of lost intimacies, disintegrating relationships and unrecognised ambitions: the pain of existing but not thriving, of being but not living, of wanting but not being able to keep faith. In a prose style of beautiful attentiveness, and with a narrative premise that rips your heart out, Robinson knits social realities with futuristic horrors in this blindingly truthful and unsettling novel.’ EDWINA PRESTON ‘My favourite kind of book: an exquisitely written page-turner. Unsettling, absorbing, beguiling. Read it.’ ANGELA SAVAGE ‘As an exploration of love over time, If You Go is unique and perfect, a work of rare moral beauty and, ultimately, of hope. Alice Robinson is the Helen Garner of the future.’ JESSICA STANLEY ‘The strength of this novel is Robinson’s intimate portrayal of the fracturing of relationships, as well as the poignant exploration of frustrated ambitions and unappreciated effort’. - The Conversation ‘Hypnotic’. - The Guardian ‘Powerfully evocative … Robinson is a strong and gentle voice for Australian literature’. - Readings Monthly ‘I definitely recommend you read it - just be prepared for the existential crisis that may follow’. - Honi Soit‘This is speculative fiction at its best … gripping action, strong characters and visceral language’. - Good Reading‘It’s searching autofiction, draped in an unsettling literary dystopia’. - The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald ‘If You Go is ready to be a staple in the Australian speculative genre’. - ArtsHub‘If You Go is original and beautifully written’. - Meredith Jaffe ‘An amazing book that works as both tense, speculative fiction and as a nuanced, philosophical exploration of divorce, motherhood and the moments that matter in our relationships’. - Rochelle Siemienowicz

Alice Robinson is the author of three novels with Affirm Press, most recently If You Go. Her debut novel, Anchor Point, was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards. The Glad Shout was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award and the Colin Roderick Literary Award, and won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Alice has a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University, for which she was awarded Vice Chancellor’s Peak Award for Research. She works at Federation University and RMIT.

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