Quotes from book
The Pure Weight of the Heart

Antonella Gambotto-Burke

The Pure Weight of the Heart is Antonella Gambotto-Burke's first novel and third book. It peaked at number six on The Sydney Morning Herald bestseller list. Published by Orion Publishing in London in 1998, it was translated into German by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag in 2000. Tatler's Book of the Month, The Pure Weight of the Heart reflected a number of themes found in The Astronomer, a short story Gambotto-Burke wrote in 1989. In its section 'What to say about the book', Tatler suggested: "Funny how the most odious characters in print are always so much worse in real life."

“In the second or so it had taken that bullet to leave its muzzle and penetrate my father's heart, between the pressure of that finger on the trigger and my father's soundless roar, somewhere in that infernal compression of decision, action, and consequence, I was forever altered.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 25.

“From the standpoint of the present, the future is always a derangement of ambitions.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 55.

“Had he pushed my thighs apart right then and there, his sunned skin dark against the tallow pallor of my own nocturnal flesh, and plunged two of his thick fingers thick within me, I would have felt it apt, so natural.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 131.

“I think my parents were bewildered by my oddity.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 3.

“The fragile teacups, the brittle relics, the frail upholstery and shattery glass: this was a world of little things and little ways, their delicacy presupposing their protection.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 304.

“The wrecked Allcock, who 15 minutes earlier had finished sodomizing Bock in the library, raised his eyebrows as if wonderfully surprised.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 332.

“Ah, Caroline Brine - with your aversion to bohemians and homosexuals, students and foreigners, with your lacerated womb and scullery rat's brain, with your phosphorescent dildos and potted African violets, haunted by the ghost of your aborted baby and contaminated by envy, you freckled, you artificially tanned, you stupefyingly bland and vicious mediocrity - even after all these years, I still detest you.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 114.

“The conversion of mass to energy and light is the prerogative of every star.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 357.

“Grief is a sphere in that it can be turned a quarter turn or turned a millionth, it can be spun on any axis and by any degree and still its aspect is the same.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 28.

“It can be said that deeply traumatized children grow into adults who live in the minefield of their own extreme emotions. Plus ca change.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 326.

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