The Thinking Woman is memoir combined with rigorous thinking and analysis, a book that prompts insightful questions about how we live.

One of the age-old questions of philosophy is what does it mean to live a good life? In this extraordinary book, scholar and writer, Julienne van Loon, applies a range of philosophical ideas to her own experience. Van Loon engages with the work of six leading contemporary thinkers and writers - Rosi Braidotti, Nancy Holmstrom, Siri Hustvedt, Laura Kipnis, Julia Kristeva and Marina Warner - through interrogating and enlivening their ideas on love, play, fear, work, wonder and friendship.

Her journey is intellectual and deeply personal, political and intimate at once. It introduces readers to six extraordinary women whose own deeply thoughtful work has much to offer all of us. They may transform our own views of what it means to live a good life.

Sales Points

This book prompts insightful questions about how we live now in this modern, complicated world
It introduces readers to six extraordinary women - Laura Kipnis, Siri Hustvedt, Nancy Holmstrom, Julia Kristeva, Marina Warner and Rosi Braidotti - whose deeply thoughtful work has much to offer all of us
Offers fresh, fierce and timely thinking about love, play, fear, work, wonder and friendship
Looks at the relationship between philosophical ideas and everyday life
Fiercely honest account of traumatic experiences in author'schildhood - growing up with an alcoholic father, the breakup of her first marriage
Laura Kipnis, Siri Hustvedt, Nancy Holmstrom, Julia Kristeva, MarinaWarner and Rosi Braidotti are acclaimed in academic/intellectual circles
Author has won the Australian/Vogel's Award and is an Honorary Fellow in Writing with the University of Iowa