Shortlisted for Montana NZ Book of the Year Award, this is a vivid and beautifully drawn novel of love, loss and longing.
A deeply moving novel in which disparate lives are drawn together. Quentin Stanley develops an unexpected connection with his hairdresser; while Matt, a troubled youth, finds himself with a baby to look after. A deception ensues that entangles unwilling participants in a dangerous and emotionally fraught situation.
Reviews
As I read, surprise and admiration blossomed. …
What Judith White turns out to be good at is not simply characterisation. Her descriptive writing about New Zealand landscapes, especially back country landscapes, is vivid, and relates symbolically to the lives of her cast. …
Across the Dreaming Night confirms her place as a major New Zealand writer.
Michael King (North and South)
Across the Dreaming Night is a novel rich in observation of this harsh land in which we love, deeply sympathetic to those who struggle to comprehend its moods and the puzzling rules by which men and women live and, ultimately, a celebration of life in the midst of loss and longing. …
That said, Across the Dreaming Night remains in my mind as a fine piece of writing, haunting and sad, with occasional flashes of humour and a marvellously unexpected ending. White has proved herself as a novelist in the first rank.
Elspeth Sandys (Herald)
White is second to none, though, when it comes to depicting states of anxiety, both comic and poignant. And the brilliance with which she enters into her character’s aberrant states of mind signals a major talent.
Iain Sharp (Sunday Star Times)
It is the imaginative vision that is so striking in Judith White’s Across the Dreaming Night, a novel that moves into different territory. It is true that this novel has elements of female self-discovery and of social comment, but at its centre is something powerful, even unworldly. …
But White writes about this strange emotion with a tenderness and inner sympathy that extends it beyond mere explanation, that allows it not to be fully understood, to be, in the end, deeply haunting and moving.
Elizabeth Caffin (New Zealand Books)