Jennifer Mills: Dyschronia

Weaving questions of consciousness and conscience into one young woman’s migraine-wracked visions of the futures, Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills is a brilliant, poignant novel that plays with the complexity of time and the instability of fate.

One morning, the residents of Clapstone – a small coastal town somewhere in Australia, wake to discover the sea has disappeared. No-one saw it coming – except Sam, who is plagued by troubling visions of this and other catastrophes.

Beginning in childhood, accompanied by terrible migraines, Sam and her hardworking single mother Ivy struggle to interpret her condition. Is she sick, lying, or a prophet?

Does she suffer from Dyschronia a disorder that skews her perception of time? Can she accept the strange responsibility of the oracle?

Oscillating between the future and the past, the people of Clapstone are left to fend for themselves as the world changes around them: isolated, economically drained, trapped between a hardscrabble past and an uncertain future – unless Sam can close the loop of time.

Blazing with questions of consciousness, trust, and destiny, this is a wildly imaginative and extraordinary third novel from award-winning author Jennifer Mills.

Jennifer Mills is the author of the novels Gone (2011) and The Diamond Anchor (2009) and a collection of short stories, The Rest is Weight (2012). Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been widely published, appearing in Meanjin, Hecate, Overland, Heat, Island, the Lifted Brow, the Griffith ReviewBest Australian Stories, New Australian Stories, and the Review of Australian Fiction.

As well as being broadcast, recorded and performed from Adelaide to Berlin, Mills is currently the fiction editor at Overland, and has contributed criticism to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Wheeler Centre, and the Sydney Review of Books.

Dyschronia is published by Picador Australia and available from all book retailers including Booktopia.

Image: Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills