Halfway to nowhere: liminal female journeys as "coming of awareness" in contemporary Australian fiction

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This thesis contains a novella, Halfway to Nowhere, and an accompanying exegesis. Halfway to Nowhere: Liminal Female Journeys as “Coming of Awareness” in Contemporary Australian Fiction is an exegetical response to the creative artefact that draws on literary theory, close reading of texts, and self-reflexive questioning to understand how the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood is represented in examples of contemporary Australian fiction. I align myself with my protagonist, El, as caught between two recognised life stages, and use autoethnographic honesty and experiential knowledge as an integral narrative thread. Using Halfway to Nowhere and four contemporary Australian works of fiction, this exegesis reappropriates the coming of age to a “coming of awareness” that is defined by several moments of transition, realisation, or epiphany. I posit that contemporaneous narration to focus the present moment, and open-ended narrative, are effective techniques for demonstrating the ongoing process of self-creation. Halfway to Nowhere is a coming-of-awareness story in a time when a search for identity isn’t limited to high school, puberty, and teenagehood. Rather than a Young Adult fiction novel or a bildungsroman text, Halfway to Nowhere is an experimental narrative about a 20-something female character straddling adolescence and adulthood, on a journey of self-discovery in her particular time and space. In leaving the ending of my novella open, I have hoped to transcend a traditionally linear narrative arc and allow readers to interpret the story through their own lens of understanding. I also hope that the experimental, self-conscious narration of Halfway to Nowhere offers the reader opportunity to reflect on their own transition to adulthood, as I have done throughout the exegesis