It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda, she meets artists, activists, students – and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on ‘the Woolfmother’ into disarray. ‘Theory & Practice’ is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.