Welcome back Cormac Reilly: ‘The Unquiet Grave’ by Dervla McTiernan
Have you heard of the Irish bog bodies? Gruesome topic, I know, but fascinating in its own way. The peat bogs occasionally reveal bodies of people who have died long ago, corpses preserved in the special environment in which they fell. Some of them thousands of years old, bearing signs of strange ritual torture or sacrificial customs from long ago.
This is the setting of the opening scene of Irish-Australian Dervla McTiernan’s new mystery novel. A body is discovered in a Galway bog. There are ritualistic mutilations on the body, just like those from ancient times. But on closer inspection it is not an historic corpse, but the body of the local teacher, a man who went missing two years earlier.
The investigation is led by Cormac Reilly, a welcome return to the pages after some stand-alone works by McTiernan set in the US (What Happened to Nina? and The Murder Rule) I’ve read those novels and they are good, but I do think her books set in Ireland are the stronger for the brilliant settings and the fully fleshed out characters who inhabit them, Cormac in particular.
He is a good detective with a strong moral compass which in earlier books has led him into difficulties with colleagues and ‘the system’ and in this novel he confronts new dilemmas. Not least of which is being asked by his ex-partner Emma to help her find her missing husband Finn, who has disappeared while on a work trip in Paris. It’s a distraction that Cormac really doesn’t need but he is a generous man and still genuinely cares about Emma and so he becomes involved, against his better judgement.
Complicating matters further are other new murder cases to solve, possibly connected to the first, possibly ‘copycat’ cases, possibly completely coincidental. It’s up to Cormac and his team to figure out if there are connections or – worst case scenario – a serial killer at large.
The cases are eventually solved but for Cormac and his partner Peter, the moral questions to do with the application of the law and justice are then front and centre. Does arresting the person who commits a crime really serve justice in this case?
As in the best crime and mystery fiction, this novel leaves you with much to think about even after the case is solved and the last page turned.
The Unquiet Grave is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Simplicity & austerity: ‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood
For some reason, I had resisted picking up a copy of Charlotte Wood’s 2024 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, though I had read and admired her earlier works such as The Weekend and The Natural Way of Things.
A contemplative work, about a middle-aged woman seeking solace in a religious community on the sparse Monaro Plains of southeastern NSW? It sounded too quiet, too contemplative, too…austere.
It is indeed all of those things.
The setting, after all, hardly invites images of lush rolling pastures. The Monaro, frequently drought-affected, frost-bitten in winter, is a harsh environment at the best of times. The region has its own appeal but it is definitely an austere kind of beauty.
And the retreat at which the unnamed narrator arrives at the novel’s opening is an unembellished place where routine and simplicity prevail.
The reader is privy to the inner life of the narrator so that we experience these details through her eyes and live the day-to-day there with her.
Her reasons for being there are just hinted at. Difficulties in her marriage. Burnout from a demanding job in the not-for-profit environmental sector, facing down environmental crises on a daily basis. Overwhelm from the modern world’s too-busy pace.
Understandable that she should want to escape all that for a while.
It would be a spoiler, actually, to say much more about what happens during her time there.
Except that the little religious backwater is in reality both a haven from and a microcosm of the outside world. The narrator has plenty of time to examine her own impulses and reactions to the daily irritations and petty doings of the community; but there are broader themes at play here too.
Memories of shameful episodes from childhood.
An unsolved crime from years before.
Is it possible to both admire and dislike someone?
Environmental impacts at the local level.
Faith and prayer.Our Simone once took me to task over my ‘sneering’ about prayer. My notion of prayer was juvenile: forget this telephone line to God bullshit, she snapped, hot with impatience. It wasn’t even about God, she said, which I thought must surely be blasphemous. Praying was a way to interrupt your own habitual thinking, she told me. It’s admitting yourself into otherness, cracking open your prejudices. It’s not chitchat; it’s hard labour.
Stone Yard Devotional ebookp170 of 308The novel is full of snippets of insights, of struggle, of contradictions, as the narrator tries to square her very humanness with the experience of living in a community dedicated to the religious. In the end, I suppose, what we see is the very humanity of organised religion. It is, after all, a very human construct and endeavour.
So despite my earlier resistance, I was pleased to read this book and to give myself over to the very interior nature of its story. From a novel told from within one one person’s head and within such a small setting, it has some big ideas to think about.
Stone Yard Devotional was published by Allen & Unwin in 2024
Women’s wartime legacies: ‘The Surgeon of Royaumont’ by Susan Neuhaus
I had not long finished reading and writing about another book on WWI (Soldiers Don’t Go Mad) when this new release landed on my ‘to be read’ pile. A novel, rather than non-fiction, it also deals with the dark legacies of war: the devastating injuries inflicted on young bodies which doctors and surgeons must try to repair.
Susan Neuhaus is herself a surgeon and an ex-army officer and she has chosen to tell the story of some of the trail-blazing women who undertook this challenging task during that earlier war.
It almost beggars belief, given how stretched the Allied armed services were then for trained and competent medical practitioners who could serve where needed, that attempts by qualified and experienced female doctors to enlist were refused. More than a dozen such women attempted and failed in Australia, but Australian women did serve as doctors overseas, most paying their own way and working in various hospitals in Britain, France, Belgium, Malta, or Turkey, among others. They did not wear the uniform of the Australian services, nor are they remembered on Australia’s memorials for those who served in the nation’s conflicts.
This novel has gone some way to bring to light their existence through a story that weaves fictional characters, events and places with real historical ones, and the author has done a fine job in doing so.
We meet Clara, a proud medical graduate working in a Sydney hospital, with dreams of becoming a surgeon. When war breaks out she wants to ‘do her bit’ but ambition also plays a part in what she does next. Defying her family’s wishes, she heads to Europe where she begins work at a hospital in France that is operated and managed entirely by women, not far from the Western Front where her fiance is also working as an Army doctor.
On arrival she is almost immediately confronted by the realities of warfare and the realisation that as a woman, she faces more hurdles than the male colleagues she left behind in Sydney. This, and her impetuous nature, lead her to some unwise choices, but she is lucky to be guided by the level-headed and incredibly dedicated and more experienced head of the Royaumont Abbey Hospital where Clara is sent.
Readers are not spared the detail of the some of the injuries confronting the surgeons and nursing staff as they work to repair shattered bodies. The contributions of other women, such as the voluntary aid detatchment who so often brought comfort and reassurance to the injured, are depicted as well.
Clara makes mistakes, some of them with grave consequences, and struggles with her own conflicts both internal and with others; all the while holding her dream of becoming an Army surgeon close to her heart.
Her year at Royaumont Abbey is intense, exhausting, and exacting at a personal and professional level. When she leaves to embark on her next challenge, she has learnt much and developed in ways that are surprising to her.
The ending is unusual for a novel of this kind and possibly more realistic for it.
Clara, the times and surrounds in which we meet her, are all presented in a way that makes her a totally believable character as she interacts with the real historical figures who also people the story. She is flawed in ways the modern reader can relate to, while we also admire the guts and determination of women like her who forged new pathways at some of history’s most difficult moments. They not only made a difference in their own time, but also opened doors for those women following them.
The Surgeon of Royaumont is published by HQ Fiction in April 2025.
My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.
The spaces between: ‘In the Margins’ by Gail Holmes
Australian writer Gail Holmes’ debut novel is inspired by a real woman who lived in seventeenth-century England, a time when bitter Civil Wars transitioned into Puritan religious and social intolerance.
Frances Wolfreston is a rector’s wife and as part of her role assisting her husband in his parish duties, the laws of the time require her to record the names of those who do not attend weekly church service. This sits uneasily with her, especially after her own mother is imprisoned for the crime of praying in the old, Catholic, manner. Frances is torn between her duty to her mother, to her husband and her young sons, to the church and the new government, and to those vulnerable souls in her community who need more care.
She is also a collector and lover of books, something her mother passed on to her, and an unusual pursuit at a time when the literacy rate amongst women was very low.
As I often do when reading a novel based on or inspired by a real person or event, I went straight to the author’s note to see which bits of the story were from the historical record. I was delighted to learn that one of the ways historians have learned about the real Frances was her habit of inscribing her name in her books. Something many of us do today without much thought, but as the author points out, a subtly powerful gesture at a time when married women had almost no property rights of their own.
After years of researching and writing about women in my own family history, I am very attuned to the challenges of ‘finding’ women in historical documents, confined as many were to birth, marriage, and death records, and largely absent elsewhere.
So a novel woven around the life of a real woman who lived over 370 years ago about whom sparse records exist is both a stretch and an invitation – and the author has taken up the latter with enthusiasm and sensitivity.
This is a story about the tragedy of intolerance in all its guises (and let’s not kid outselves it went out with the Puritans). It’s also about the oppression of women in small ways and large – it touches chillingly on the witch trials of the seventeenth century – and the persecution of anyone deemed ‘different’.
But it’s also about the small acts of kindness and even of defiance that can glue families and communities together: the seemingly insignificant things done or words spoken, often by women and sometimes by men, too, that can make a difference in one life or many.
‘We are like the spaces between the words of a book. The words are what people see, what they argue over, fight wars over, swoon over, collect. Yet without the spaces between, there is nothing at all. We are the spaces, Mrs Edwards.’
‘Yet you want to teach all these common children to read those very words.’
‘If you can read the words, you can begin to see the spaces.’
In the Margins pp 273-274In the Margins was published by Ultimo Press in 2024.
My thanks to the author for a copy to review.
Harsh realities: ‘A World of Silence’ by Jo Skinner
Classified as contemporary women’s fiction, A World of Silence deals with the all-too-timeless and pervasive issue that blights so many lives: intimate partner abuse and coercive control.
The three women at the centre of the novel, all entirely believable and relatable, have been connected since their youth. Now in their thirties, their lives have taken different trajectories but now have reconnected, in ways not entirely welcome or comfortable for each of them.
Kate is a psychologist with two young kids and a husband who seems more intent on reviving his music career than on his family duties. When a former client commits suicide after her violent partner is unexpectedly released from gaol, Kate can’t shake the awful images of the suffering Bea had endured at that man’s hands.
Her best friend is Tori, a single mum who has created her dream business, a vintage clothing and furniture store, while raising her son. Tori is determined not to let the man whom she knows to be unworthy of the title of father into her boy’s life.
When superstar football player Daryl turns up in their seaside town, complete with his beautiful blonde wife Shelley and their three children, both Kate and Tori are shaken. Daryl and Shelley have played important – and not always positive – roles in both their pasts. And now it seems they are back to upend their worlds once again.
There is an undercurrent of tension that builds to an almost unbearable climax towards the end as the three women at the centre of the story try their best to sort out the complexities of their own situations and to help each other.
They make mistakes – don’t we all? – and as a reader I felt moments of intense frustration (similar to watching a TV program when I want to yell at a character ‘don’t go outside! there’s someone out there with a knife!’ You know the kind of thing I mean…it seems obvious to us as readers or viewers, right?) But of course, when we are immersed in a situation in real life, it is anything but. So, good on the author for allowing her characters to be human with everyday frailties and make real, human mistakes.
One of the key mistakes the characters make in this novel – and that people make in real life, especially around issues of partner violence and coercive control – is to keep silent. Not to speak up, speak out, share concerns, worries, hunches. So the title of this novel is spot on. And the cover illustration chillingly evocative.
A World of Silence is a gripping read. Chances are, it may remind you of someone you know. Sadly. Novels like this are a good way of getting more understanding of these difficult issues out there into the wider community. I was pleased to read it.
It’s published by Hawkeye Publishing in April 2025.
My thanks to the publisher for an early copy to review.Vivid colonial story: ‘The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress’ by Sue Williams
The third work of Australian historical fiction by Sue Williams, The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress tells the story of the naval officer who became the third governor of the British colony of New South Wales, but also the lesser-known entwined stories of the two women who shared parts of his life.
Williams has done this twice before, with great effect. Elizabeth and Elizabeth focused on the wives of Governor Lachlan Macquarie and John Macarthur. That Bligh Girl introduced Anna Bligh, the daughter of the notorious William Bligh (of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame) who replaced Gidley King as Governor in 1808.
As with those earlier novels, this new book gives a fabulous insight into the earliest, troubled years of the colony, from the point of view of women. A point of view usually overlooked in official histories of the men who, let’s be honest, made most of the decisions in those times.
Actually, this novel gives a vivid picture of the establishment of two colonies, because Gidley King was sent to put down British roots on Norfolk Island before returning to New South Wales. The author’s research is lightly handled but readers are privy to the many difficulties at both Port Jackson (later Sydney) and the even more remote Norfolk, and the logistical, moral and emotional challenges faced by successive governors.
By most historical accounts, Gidley King was an able and a fair and even handed adminsitrator. It is in his personal affairs that the other side of the man’s character are illuminated.
In this, he was definitely a man of his time and milieu. Men of his rank and situation often thought nothing of taking a convict wife as mistress, especially on the long voyage to the colonies. By the time the transport ships arrived, many had a baby on the way.
This is what happened to Ann Inett, a seamstress who had fallen on hard times when her soldier lover was killed in the Revolutionary War in America, leaving her with two small children to raise alone. One desperate crime sees Ann wrenched from her children, transported to New South Wales on a First Fleet ship, part of the great experiment of setting up a settlement from nothing on the other side of the world. Gidley King invites her to be his housekeeper, attracted by her obliging nature and quiet demeanour and, as they say, ‘one thing leads to another…’ A very common tale, part of Australia’s foundation story.
Dare I say it, more relevant to many modern Australians than the ANZAC story?
Before long, Ann has two young children with him, they are sent to Norfolk Island to endure even harder conditions there, then he is ordered to return to England…what will become of her?
It’s no spoiler to relate the next bit. Gidley King does return to Sydney. He had promised Ann marriage on his return but instead he brings back a wife, who is already expecting a baby!
It is to the author’s credit that she manages to relate this part of the story in a way which made me want to keep reading, rather than throw the book across the room. She took me into Gidley King’s head and his world view. Not a pleasant place, I admit, but it allowed me to see the constraints (as he saw them) on his moral and personal choices. So very different to today’s views. As I often say, people are no different, essentially, but society’s beliefs and expectations certainly change over time.
And as mentioned above, he was among many, many soldiers, sailors and officers who did exactly the same thing back then. Not an excuse. Just background. Captain David Collins, for example, who became the colony’s Judge Advocate, took convict Nancy Yeates, as mistress. She features in this novel too.
The real heroine of this novel, I believe, is the woman Gidley King marries, Anna Josepha. Can you image marrying a man after a very brief courtship, then boarding a ship to sail across the world to a rudimentary outpost of society, arrive heavily pregnant, to be confronted by your new husband’s mistress and his two children with her?
It seems that this quiet, ‘plain’ little woman rose to the occasion magnificently, smoothing what must have been a fraught and humilating situation for all concerned. She built a bridge between herself and Ann, between her husband, his existing children and those she went on to have with him. She took responsibility for the education of his children with Ann (to Ann’s credit also, as this meant losing her children yet again for a time).
And in doing all this, Anna Josepha was Gidley King’s right hand in his role as administrator and as Governor, acting as informal secretary, First Lady, diplomat, helping to sooth fractious tempers and care for her husband when illness took its toll.
An old story, isn’t it? And depressingly common: the faithful, loyal wife or mistress, supporting, helping, building up their menfolk. And then being forgotten in the annals of history.
So it’s wonderful to see their stories being told, both in more recent non-fiction and through the lens of fiction as in this novel.
The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress is published by Allen & Unwin in Janurary 2025.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced reading copy to review.
More Australian history adventures for kids: ‘Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger’ by Jackie French
I’m delighted that my final book review post for 2025 is another brilliant historical fiction for middle-grade readers by Jackie French. Did I mention I am a fan? Maybe once or twice…
The reason is that she effortlessly tells stories about Australia’s past that ignite imagination and a passion to know more, wrapped up in tales of adventure featuring characters we can both admire and relate to.
Tigg is such a character. Growing up an orphan on the fringes of the rough and dangerous Victorian goldfields of the 1850’s, Tigg has had to learn many things to survive. Under the less-than-careful eye of ‘Ma Murphy’ who runs a shanty on the diggings but gambles and drinks most of the takings, Tigg has learnt how to grow vegetables from her neighbour, a Chinese gardener; bush skills from Mrs O’Hare, a Wadawurrung woman; and reading and writing from ‘Gentleman Once’, who used to be a teacher at a grand school for English boys.
She has also learnt how to be a bushranger.
Disguised as a boy, she holds up coaches on the way to and from the diggings, but only ever takes half of passengers’ money, and never anything precious like a wedding ring. And she only robs to get money so that Mr Ah Song can pay rent for the land he gardens.
But one day everything goes very badly wrong and Tigg has to go into hiding, until a plan can be hatched to smuggle her out of danger – disguised this time as a Chinese man on his way to the goldfields. To do this, she must join with hundreds of other desperate, poor and hungry Chinese on what became known as the ‘Long Walk’, a journey across unmarked territory of hundreds of miles, facing thirst, hunger – and attacks from angry white men and sometimes even children.
So the author weaves in another of the astonishing stories from Australian history; one that has until relatively recently been hidden or forgotten. The shameful racism directed specifically against Chinese people which reared its ugly head during the gold rush period of the mid 1800s. It persisted for decades, manifested in the so-called ‘White Australia Policy’ of the early 1900s and, it could be argued, rose again with politicians like Pauline Hanson seeing an opportunity to score points on the back of anti-Asian sentiment.
The power of Jackie French’s writing for children is that she is not afraid to introduce these topics for younger readers. She treats her readers with respect, knowing that children can learn about difficult things that have happened in the past and reflect on how they have impacted on the present. Seeing the nineteenth century world of colonial Australia through the eyes of someone like Tigg allows a perspective other than our own, like putting on a magic pair of glasses or stepping into a time machine. Tigg grows up in an environment of poverty, deprivation, surrounded by racists and opportunists – but also by people of many races, and people of generosity and kindness. In other words, people.
Towards the end of the novel, Tigg discusses the appalling attacks she has witnessed with a businessman she comes to know, hoping he can do something to help:
‘You’re a wealthy businessman. I want you to convince the colonies’ parliaments to welcome the Chinese into Australia.’
He looked at her, amused. ‘I am afraid that is beyond my ability.’
… ‘Why?’ demanded Tigg. ‘The Chinese here are peaceful and hard-working and have skills the colonies need.’
‘None of which matters in the slightest. The Chinese look different, and that is enough. Starving miners need to think there is at least one class more miserable than themselves, and so they choose the Chinese, or indeed any Asian to look down on, be afraid of, or hate. Don’t you have a slightly easier request?’Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger pp277-278
So we go into Tigg’s world, not wanting to put the book down when it’s lights out time or we are tired. We want to keep reading because we care about Tigg and all the other amazing but believable characters around her.
Jackie French’s novels can do that. They are magic.
Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger is published by HarperCollins Childrens’ Books in December 2024.
My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.
What stories tell us: ‘Finding Eliza’ by Larissa Behrendt
Euahleyai / Gamillaroi author, filmmaker, lawyer and academic, Larissa Behrendt writes both non-fiction and fiction which illuminate aspects of Australia’s history from an indigenous perspective. Her writing is always thought-provoking and perceptive, and Finding Eliza is no exception.
The book takes as its starting point the power of stories to teach, explain, and create beliefs and attitudes. She takes the well-known historical event of the 1836 shipwreck of the Sterling Castle on an island off Australia’s east coast. The only woman among a handful of survivors, Eliza was kept alive by the Butchulla people of the island called K’gari (later named by the English after the ship’s captain – and Eliza’s husband – Fraser Island). She spent several weeks there, separated from other white people, after witnessing -according to her account – her husband’s death after being speared by a Butchulla man.
This story has been told and retold many times since then, including by Eliza herself after her rescue and return to England. There have been so many versions that it is difficult to know what parts are based on real events and what has been changed, embroidered or created.
The author’s focus, however, is how the stories that grew up around Eliza’s experiences, illustrate the themes and motivations of those telling them. There are elements needed for a story to work, both for those telling and hearing the story. Eliza had to be ‘good’ and the Aboriginal people ‘bad.’ She must conform to the Victorian-era stereotype of the virtuous, middle-class, loyal wife. It was commonly believed by Europeans at the time that the Australian ‘natives’ were savage, unpredictable, and prone to cannabalism – therefore, to be feared and seen as inferior.
So it is not surprising that Eliza and the Butchulla were represented accordingly in the tales that grew up around her experiences.
The Butchulla people had their own world view and beliefs. They were not just a silent backdrop to the adventures of a white woman, nor were they an undifferentiated source of threat. But in order to provide the tension necessary in Eliza’s story, they had to be portrayed in this way. The truth is that without their assistance and care, Eliza would have most likely perished on the island before she could be rescued.
…{Eliza’s} survival of the shipwreck is not the climax of this story; it is just the beginning. The heart of her story unfolds when she makes contact with the Aboriginal people who populate this land, and it is her alleged captivity by these ‘brutal’ and ‘cannabalistic savages’ and her eventual rescue that gives her tale its compelling drama.
Finding Eliza, ebook version, location 7%
The author takes this a starting point, to then explore a range of aspects of colonialism in Australia.
These include: the ‘Enlightenment’ ideals of the nineteenth century viewed alongside the dispossession and savagery of occupation and colonisation; black / white relations including sexual relations, sexual slavery and prostitution; the silence about the contribution of Aboriginal women to the colonial economy; the control over Aboriginal lives wielded by the colonists; why the trope of cannabilism held such power among whites; cultural appropriation, and how positive stereotypes can be as damaging as negative ones.
As Ms Behrendt concludes:
In… stories, we learn much more about the coloniser than we ever learn about the colonised, but by looking at them through different lenses and different perspectives we begin to appreciate the complexities and nuances of our own history.
FInding Eliza loc 89%
This is a book that made me think, review my own preconceptions about the past and the stories I grew up with. It is as relevant today as when it was first published by University of Qld Press, in 2016.
Scholar & mystic: ‘Rapture’ by Emily Maguire
Australian Emily Maguire’s new novel takes us straight to central Europe in the ninth century. I was interested in reading this once I heard that it was set in Mainz, in the Rhineland region of what (many hundreds of years later) became Germany.
Why? Because my German ancestor was born and lived near this city. Once a Roman fort, in medieaval times it was part of an area known as Francia, ruled by King Charles (Charlemagne) and his heirs.
Rapture’s protagonist is Agnes, only child of an English priest, brought up by her father to read, to know languages and to listen to the many theological and philosophical debates around his table with learned men of the city and its abbey.
As she approaches marriagable age, however, this begins to change. Agnes understands that a life of learning and scholarship is not for the likes of her. After witnessing the horrific death of a woman in childbirth, she begins to wonder how she can escape the bloody service required of girls. (p34)
She meets a visitor to her father’s house, a monk named Randulph, who speaks to her as if she, too, has a brain and likes to use it. He is to play an important role as circumstances change for Agnes when tragedy strikes, simultaneously opening a door to other life possibilities.
With his help, she dons the identity and clothing of a Benedictine monk, and as a literate scholar and scribe, finds a place amongst the men of Fulda Abbey.
Here the author’s research and imagination allows readers to enter a world long gone: the hard physical labour, the monotony, cold and hunger of monastic life, the requirement of absolute obedience, the painstaking process of making parchment and inks on which she then transcribes works of classical and religious literature. It is a fascinating glimpse into the past.
Agnes spends years there; but when war, famine and pestilence transform the land – including the abbey- she needs to move on.
Next she reinvents herself as a mystic religious man, and travels to Athens, dealing with threats from bandits, wolves and the feared Northmen on the way. She becomes celebrated for her learning and her discourse and teaching; but celebration brings its own set of dangers. To counter the threat of discovery of her real identity, she retreats into a spartan life as a hermit, forcing her body and her mind to submit to deprivation and isolation.
Agnes does all these things, not simply to avoid the life of servitude and childbearing that she would otherwise face, but because she truly wishes to learn about and fully serve God. She has a deep and genuine faith and her actions stem from a belief that a religious life of scripture and study is what she is called to.
What she observes and discovers never challenge that belief, but she does question the interpretations of men, who hold the power in both religious and secular worlds.
This culminates in her final journey to Rome where she begins to teach, but ends up surrounded by the corruption of ninth-century Vatican politics and intruige. Here the author has drawn on the legend of Pope Joan; an almost certainly mythical figure, reputed to have been the first and only female pope.
The story does not have a ‘happy’ ending, but that is actually beside the point. Agnes’ life is one of struggle, searching for her own path through a troubled and turbulent world. Her joys and hardships are very human, as she strives for a life of scholarship and religious devotion.
I consumed this novel in two days. I was entranced by Agnes, her intellect and her faith and the risks she takes to be true to both. The medieaval worlds of central Europe and the Mediterranean are brought brilliantly to life in Rapture.
Rapture is published by Allen & Unwin in October 2024.
Memory lane: ‘Dropping the Mask’ by Noni Hazlehurst
My son spent a portion of mornings and afternoons in his early childhood, enjoying the company of Big and Little Ted, Jemima, Humpty, the square and round windows – and Noni Hazlehurst, among a cast of other beautiful and engaging presenters and characters. PlaySchool was a ground-breaking progam when it began on the Australian Broadcasting Commission in the 1960s and is still the longest-running children’s TV show in Australia.
The show’s guiding philosophy is about respect for children, kindness, familiarity along with new experiences, and a simple approach that ignites imagination rather than dictates what young viewers should think and feel.
Perhaps unsuprisingly, these qualities have been reflected in Noni’s own approach to life and to her many roles in TV, film and theatre.
Dropping the Mask is her story: from a sheltered childhood in suburban Melbourne, to attending the drama school at Flinders Univeristy in Adelaide in the heady times of the early 1970s, her first steps into the world of performance, a successful acting career, and the inevitable ups and downs of any life lived well.
The book follows a fairly straight chronology, with asides here and there where Noni reflects on experiences and draws out her themes, the main one of which is about living an authentic life rather than ‘pretending’ (kind of ironic if you think about how acting is perceived by most viewers). The motif of the mask appears often. Noni’s view of performance is that when inhabiting a dramatic role, she has always felt able to be her most authentic self, drawing on her own experiences and emotions to present the truth of a character, rather than simply performing the words of the script.
There is so much I loved about her story. I was born at the tail end of the ‘baby boom’ era, but with two older sisters I recognised so much of Noni’s experience as a youngster: the conservatism of Australian society and politics at that time; the emergence of teen culture and the more radical ideas coming from the UK and USA; the rampant growth of consumerism; the agonies of the teen years; memories of the 1969 moon landing; the beginnings of genuine multiculturalism. I know the feeling of suddenly becoming, in effect, an only child when older siblings leave home. I remember starting university and the realisation that there was a whole world of new thoughts and ideas to experience.
For fans of film and stage, Noni’s many reflections on the growth of Australia’s movie, TV and theatre industries are fascinating. There are some anecdotes from behind the scenes – some startling, some very funny.
She describes the joys and challenges of family life while trying to balance an acting career; her experiences living in the Blue Mountains of NSW and Tamborine Mountain in Queensland; the sad fact that the arts in general appear to be held in higher esteem in other parts of the world than in Australia.
Among the masks that Noni has observed in her life were those worn by her parents. Even as a child, she always had a sense that they were ‘acting happy’, that things were not quite right. Their world was tiny, protected, safe, with a small circle of friends from church. Her mother seemed anxious, her father very protective. It was not until after their deaths, when Noni appeared on an episode of the Australian version of the TV family history show Who Do You Think You Are? that she understood why.
Even if you are not a regular fan of the show, this episode is definitely worth watching. Seeing Noni realise how her newlywed parents’ WWII experiences in England created enduring emotional legacies for their family, is very moving. And the show’s other revelations about the long family history of performance artistry are incredible.
Dropping the Mask was for me, rather like enjoying a long conversation with an old friend about family, life, the choices we make, and the things that are important to us. Highly recommended.
Dropping the Mask was published by HarperCollins in October 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
