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
War, mental health…and poetry: ‘Soldiers Don’t Go Mad’ by Charles Glass
This is the story of the very beginning of recognition of the condition suffered by so many veterans of war, now known as ‘post traumatic stress disorder’ or PTSD. During and after World War I, it was often colloquially called ‘shell-shock’ – but that was when it was recognised as a medical condition. Too often, it was seen as malingering or cowardice and sufferers ridiculed, abused or even executed for desertion.
The author describes the particular conditions of this war that led to the high numbers of both officers and enlisted soldiers suffering from this ‘nervous and mental shock’: high explosive artillery, rapid-fire machine guns, modern mortar shells, aerial bombardment, poison gas and flamethrowers, and trench warfare in which soldiers were often forced into a helpless, passive position for hours, days or weeks at a time. In other words, warfare of an industrial nature on an industrial scale.
Something had to be done to restore soldiers to some semblance of health, when physical wounds had been healed but the mutism, shaking, nightmares, paralysis, or blindness remained with no apparent physical cause. Craiglockhart was a specialist military hospital established in Scotland specifically for the care of shell-shocked British officers. By the end of its first year of operation, it had admitted 556 patients. By the war’s end, it had treated over 1,800.
Unfortunately, enlisted men received no special care and were either expected to return to active service or invalided out of the army with no treatment available to them.
The book describes the care provided at Craiglockhart under the direction of the two principal psychiatrists: Dr William Halse Rivers and Dr Arthur Brock; two men whose treatment approaches and general philosophies differed widely but when matched with the ‘right’ patients, they were able to effect great change for the officers involved.And this is where the poetry part of the equation comes in.
Two officers who were perfectly aligned with their therapists’ approaches were the (later to become famous) war poets Wilfred Owen (treated by Dr Brock) and Siegfried Sassoon (treated by Dr Rivers). Poetry was at this time a revered literary form and each of these men found solace and expression of their wartime experiences in writing.
When Wilfred Owen first came to the hospital he was young, inexperienced and at the very beginning of his literary career. He was thrilled to meet the older, published Sassoon, who became something of a mentor, and Owen’s writing developed as the two men exchanged ideas and discussed their work. All the time they were also engaged with the various therapeutic programs set out for them by their respective doctors.
Sassoon is an interesting character, because he came to despise what he began to see as the deliberate continuation of the war by the Allied governments: rather than seeking peace he believed they were prolonging the war in order to crush Germany completely. He was so appalled by this that he initially risked court-martial rather than obey orders to return to the front. Again, an example of the difference in treatment of officers (usually from upper and middle class ranks) and enlisted soldiers (usually working class men). Sassoon had also won a Military Cross for bravery early in the war so his stance proved very embarrassing for the War Office at the time.
When the Armistice was finally declared in November 1918, he described it as: ‘a loathsome ending to the loathsome tragedy of the last four years’ and ‘They mean to skin Germany alive. A peace to end peace.’ Looking at what happened just two decades later, who could argue he was wrong?
What took Sassoon back to the front was not support for the war but for the soldiers who served under him and concern for their welfare. He felt guilty (as many at Craiglockhart did) for living in relative comfort while his men suffered.
Owen, too, was discharged and returned to active duty. Unlike Sassoon, he did not see the Armistice declaration. He was killed in northern France at the age of twenty-six, just two weeks before the cease-fire. As Charles Glass notes in this book:
‘Owen was a success for Craiglockhart and for ergotherapy [the therapeutic approach of Dr Brock], but for him the outcome was death.’ (p279)There are many interesting characters in this book: military people, early figures in the field of psychotherapy, well-known literary and artistic people of the era. For me, the stand-out ‘character’, if you will, is the poetry, snippets of which are quoted throughout, illustrating the state of mind of the two main poets discussed. It is especially enlightening to see the nature of their poetry change as they discarded the patriotic ‘heroic’ themes of the era for more gritty realism as their own war experience began to bite, and in Sassoon’s case at least, his growing pacifist beliefs were reflected in his verse.
So, here are two samples of poems by these men because they and their work should not be forgotten. Especially now as the world seems to be once again moving towards darkness.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen (written 1917, published posthumously 1920)Aftermath
Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.
Siegfried Sassoon (written 1919)Soldiers Don’t Go Mad is published by Bedford Square Publishers in March 2025.
My thanks to the publishers 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.Unrecorded lives: ‘Tell Me Everything’ by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is a genius at the small moments. The lift of an arm, the turn of a head, a hand on a shoulder. A fallen blossom. Slushy snow on a sidewalk, wet shoes. A blush, a smile. Speaking, listening, being truly heard.
The small moments that build to make a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, a family. A life.
Tell Me Everything features characters from previous Strout novels such as Olive Ketteridge, Oh William! Lucy By the Sea. It is now post-Covid (or not quite, because Covid doesn’t seem to really go away, does it?) and Lucy and William have remained in their Maine house near the sea. Lucy’s friendship with local lawyer Bob Burgess has developed and deepened; they take regular long walks together where they talk – and really listen – to each other.
And who – who who who in this whole entire world – does not want to be heard?
Tell Me Everything p198Meanwhile Bob has taken on the defence of a local man accused of the murder of his mother. It’s a complicated case with many layers of hurt and history to uncover and understand.
Around Bob and Lucy, are other layers of hurt and misunderstanding as various members of their families struggle with illness, accidents, separation, grief and loss.
How each person deals with these inevitable setbacks are what makes up this novel’s dramatic sweep. Nothing out of the ordinary: they are the kinds of stumbling blocks to be found on the paths of most of us at some point or another, unless we blessed with a totally charmed life.
Another thread throughout are the visits Lucy pays to ninety year old Olive Kitteridge, during which they tell each other stories about people they have known – ‘unrecorded lives’. Some of the stories are almost unbearably painful, others shocking, a few mundane. But in their telling, the lives described are given meaning. And is that not what most of us seek in our lives – a meaning to the living of them?
So, in one sense Tell Me Everything is a novel where nothing in particular happens. In another, it’s a book where a great deal is happening a great deal of the time.
Tell Me Everything is a beautiful, gentle, heartfelt book. If you haven’t read the earlier books by this author, I would recommend you at least read Lucy by the Sea first, as it will help to place Lucy and William, Bob and Margaret, into the Maine town where this novel mainly takes place. Actually, do yourself a big favour and read all the books in this collection about Lucy, William, Bob and so on. Elizabeth Strout’s writing really is a masterclass in ‘less is more’, in subtlety and in using everyday language and keen observation to great effect.
Tell Me Everything was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, in 2024.
2024: My year in books (and what’s in store for 2025)
In 2024 I participated in three reading challenges again, always a fun way to keep variety in my reading diet. Sometimes the results at the end of a year can be surprising; this is one of those times.
In the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge I undertook to read 15 books of historical fiction – I came in right on target. It is easily my favourite genre of fiction.
For 2025, I will choose that same target in this challenge.
In the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, I chose the ‘Amateur Sleuth’ target of 5-15 books, and hit 14 books, so that’s a giveaway that crime fiction is another favourite of my genres. I’ll go for around that many again this year.The surprise result for me this year was the Non-Fiction Reading Challenge, where I chose a conservative target of ‘nibbler’, aiming for 6 books. Instead I read a whopping 16 non-fiction books in 2024! I’m not sure what that means, but perhaps I should choose a higher target for 2025? Well, I’ll probably aim for ‘nibbler’ again and see how I go.
I have a private challenge of my own, to read more books by First Nations authors, in any genre. In 2024 my reading included 10 works by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers: encompassing fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books. In 2025 I hope to equal or better that number.
As always, I am indebted to publishers, especially HarperCollins, and to NetGalley, for sending advanced copies of books for review. I also thank authors who have approached me asking if I would read and review their work.
I know it can be a scary thing to put your writing out into the world and ask for feedback. I never approach the task of reviewing a book lightly. Someone has put months (usually years) of work into research, drafting, rewriting, redrafting, editing, rewriting, editing again, and again, and again…until the finished product is finally put into their hands. For this reason I treat each and every book with the respect it deserves. And I thank each author and publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read and review their work.
So, on to 2025. I wish all my fellow readers a wonderful bookish year ahead.
Brilliant insight: ‘More or Less Maddy’ by Lisa Genova
I’ve read two previous novels by American nueroscientist and author Lisa Genova, and loved them both. Still Alice (made into a feature film) and Left Neglected offered fascinating insights into early onset dementia and a brain injury known as Left Neglect, respectively. More or Less Maddy likewise tells a very human story behind a medical diagnosis that devastates individuals and their families.
When bipolar disorder strikes Maddy, a young college student from a comfortable middle class family in Connecticut, she is already struggling with a sense of not fitting in. While her sister and brother seem to belong to the picture perfect world of their parents, happy with the already mapped-out life trajectories of education and career pathways, marriage, family and lovely home, Maddy dreams of a career as a stand-up comedian in New York.
Her first episode of mania at first feels wonderful. It rockets her out of the depression she has suffered for months, seemingly overnight. Suddenly she feels she can do anything, achieve anything. She doesn’t need to sleep, she writes brilliant comedy, and is sure she will soon be writing an authorised biography of Taylor Swift, her artistic heroine.
It all comes to a sticky end and that is when her distraught and frightened family step in and she is confronted with hospital, therapy, doctors and medication. She is fortunate to be connected with a knowledgable and empathic doctor who skillfully guides both Maddy and her troubled family on this new and frightening journey.
But there are plenty of pitfalls, not least of which is the diagnosis itself. Maddy’s struggles with the lifelong nature of her condition, and the burden of the stigma it carries, are brilliantly and sensitively portrayed in the novel; as are those of her family, who only want to keep her safe.
How to, or indeed whether to tell friends, old and new, of her condition, is a preoccupation. As is coping with the side effects of the various new drugs she must take. Keeping to a pretty strict lifestyle regimen: no late nights, no illicit drugs or alcohol, eating a healthy diet, watching her mood like a hawk, keeping a mood journal…all rather tiresome for a ‘normal’ twenty year-old.
But of course that’s just it. Once she has heard that word – bipolar – Maddy can never feel normal again.
I cared for Maddy a great deal, and could not wait to return to her story each time I had a chance to pick up the book.
The author does not pull punches. Maddy’s situation is not prettied up: there are relapses and mistakes, some that made me want to skip pages. But I read on because I knew this was all a necessary part of Maddy’s story. The ending is not tied up in a neat bow but there is hope for a better future for Maddy and those who love her.
If you see this book in your local bookstore or library, please do read it. It goes a long way to humanise this mental disorder that a suprising number of people live with. Lisa Genova has such a gift and I can’t wait to see what topic she might tackle next.
More or Less Maddy is published by Allen & Unwin in January 2025.
My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an early review copy.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.Austria in WWII: ‘The Secret Society of Salzburg’ by Renee Ryan
This historical fiction book opens with the arrest by the Gestapo of acclaimed and loved Austrian opera singer Elsa Mayer-Braun, on a stage in Salzburg in 1943. So, an early heads up of what one of the two main characters has to deal with.
From here the narrative weaves back and forth in time, and also across the English Channel, from the Continent to London, where we meet the other protagonist Hattie, who works in a dull civil service office, but longs to paint.
An unlikely pair of women to put together, but that is what the author does, as a chance meeting develops into a deep friendship between the two. Hattie travels to Austria with her sister to see Elsa perform and the sisters become stalwart fans of Elsa and her operas.
But of course war is coming and once their nations are at war, everything changes – except the women’s determination to carry out the secretive work of smuggling Jews out of Austria to England. Both Elsa and Hattie will not stop these life-saving rescue missions, despite the ever-increasing danger involved.
While Hattie’s artistic career takes off and Elsa travels Europe to perform – including singing for some high ranking Nazi officers – their secret missions ramp up.
As the tension mounts the reader is left guessing: is Elsa’s husband a threat or an ally? Who is the art dealer who supports Hattie’s artistic success and may just be falling in love with her? Will Elsa’s deep secrets be kept hidden or discovered by the Nazi heirarchy?
I loved that this story was inspired by real-life English sisters, civil servants who learned of the persecution of Jews through a freindship with an Austrian conductor and his wife. In my view, the best kind of historical fiction is that which touches on real people or events.
The Secret Society of Salzburg gives an insight into the experiences of Austrians in the lead-up and the early years of the war and Nazi occupation. It’s an engrossing story, well told.
The Secret Society of Salzburg was published in November 2023 by HarperCollins. My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Re-peopling history: ‘Dirrayawadha – Rise Up’ by Anita Heiss
I read this book with a sorrowful heart, knowing that the resolution could not be a positive one, even with the strong threads of family, love and strength that are twined throughout.
Historical fiction, it is based on the early conflicts between the Wiradjuri people of the central west of NSW with colonial settlers. These became known as the ‘Bathurst wars’ but were part of a wider, escalating series of violent encounters and retributions that today are more accurately referred to as the ‘Australian wars.’ Yes, folks, Australia has indeed had armed warfare on its soil.
The novel tells the story of Windradyne, a Wiradyuri leader, who refuses to submit to the ‘white ghosts’ who are attempting to take over his country and force his people into subjection. Windradyne is a real figure from history, a freedom fighter, though of course at the time the colonial authorities and many settlers regarded him more as a terrorist.
Along with Windradyne we meet his sister, Miinaa, who is living with some of her family at the property of the Nugents, Irish settlers who arrived free to the colony and have taken up land to farm. Of course the Nugents are part of the colonial mission and therefore part of the problem. However, they are kind people and have some sympathy for the Wiradjuri, and treat their employees, assigned convicts, and Wiradjuri, fairly.
Miinaa misses her extended family and their way of life, as she watches her world rapidly changing, almost beyond recognition. And as the violence surrounding her increases, she worries for her brother and the rest of her family.
Into the picture steps Dan, an Irish political prisoner transported to NSW as a convict. Dan can see the similarities between the British subjugation of the Irish, and the situation faced by the Wiradjuri. As Dan and Miinaa fall in love, he starts to understand more of the Wiradjuri world view, their cultural and spiritual practices and how Country is at the centre of it all. He is not alone but definitely in the minority among his fellow convicts and most white people, in his empathy with the Wiradjuri.
The outcome of this novel is not a happy one. How could it be, knowing how real history played out – and how First Nations people across Australia continue to suffer from generations of inherited trauma and dispossession?
There are some moments of hope and happiness, though. The strong bonds that unite and support Wiradjuri as they face an existential threat. The ability of some characters to reach across the racial divide and find things that connect them with each other.
As I often do, I checked out the historical facts that this story is inspired by, and was heartened to learn that the Nugents were based on a real family who did indeed employ (and shelter) Wiradjuri people, and maintained strong friendships with them across several generations. And Windradyne did not meet his death at the hands of the ‘white ghosts.’
The one aspect of the novel that jarred a little for me was the language used by characters, Wiradjuri and white, especially that of Dan. In his attempts to get his fellow-convicts and local settlers to understand the shared injustices faced by Wiradjuri and Irish, his dialogue includes many terms and expressions that I doubt would have been used by a young man at that time, such as ‘civil liberties’ and ‘plight of the dispossessed.’ Perhaps a well-educated Irish political activist may have done so, but I’m not sure about a man such as Dan.
However, the author uses these for a reason – to put the concepts into a modern-day perspective. In doing so, she blurs the boundaries of historical context a little, but makes the ideas and themes in the novel more accessible to many readers.
One of the many things I enjoyed about the book is the liberal use of Wiradjuri words and phrases throughout. This is a noticeable trend in books by First Nations authors and I love it! There is an extensive glossary provided but after reading through it, I found that simply immersing myself in the story and encountering repeated uses of words allowed me to absorb the meanings without feeling like I was taking part in a language lesson.
Use of Wiradjuri language also allows readers to glimpse some of the important concepts for Wiradjuri people, both in the past and today. It is no coincidence, for example, that the words I ‘learnt’ from reading this book included ones for children, Country, respect, family.
Dirrayawadha – Rise Up is gripping, troubling, and insightful and I recommend it to all who want to understand more about Australia’s colonial past. One of blurb comments about Heiss’ historical fiction is that she is ‘re-peopling history’ and I think that is accurate. Books like this bring to life real events in our nation’s past that most would have only a vague idea of, at best. I guarantee you will never visit Bathurst (one of my favourite country towns) in quite the same way after reading it.
Dirrayawadha – Rise Up was published by Simon & Schuster in July 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a copy to review.Historical richness: ‘Threadbare’ by Jane Loeb Rubin
I reviewed US author Jane Loeb Rubin’s debut novel In the Hands of Women last year. Her second novel has been released recently and is actually a prequel to the first, as it tells the story of the experiences of refugees and immigrants in New York in the late 1800’s.
Once again there is a treasure trove of historical riches in this book. The main character is Tillie, a girl whose aspirations to attend high school are cut short by the tragic death of her mother from breast cancer. Tillie is left in charge of helping her father run their farm in Harlem, on what was then the northern outskirts of the city. She also keeps house and looks after her younger siblings, including Hannah, who is the main character featured in In the Hands of Women. In this new novel we get a fuller understanding of the tough circumstances in which Hannah’s life began, and the sacrifices made by her older sister.
Tillie marries at sixteen and fortunately – for it’s a match arranged in part by the local Rabbi – it is a mostly happy one. However her new husband brings her to live in the tenements of New York’s lower east side, notorious for their terrible squalor and poverty. The plan is to stay here only temporarily until they can save enough to move to a better area.
Tillie’s refuge is the local Jewish centre with its lending library, where she begins teaching English to the many people from Europe crowding into the city.
She helps her husband with his business selling buttons to the burgeoning clothing trade in the city, and becomes fascinated by fashions and the beautiful clothing she sees, but can never afford. During this time the family experience the trauma of the infectious diseases that run rampant through the poorly ventilated apartment buildings, and the death of an infant.
As an aside, I looked on Google maps to get an idea of the areas being described in the book. I was pleased to note that in the district where Tillie and Abe first live, there is now a museum dedicated to telling the stories of the many immigrant communities who lived here from the nineteenth century. The link to the Tenement Museum is here, if you are interested. If I ever get to New York City, it will be on my ‘to do’ list for sure.
As Abe’s business grows they move to a newer apartment and things begin to look up for the family. With her best friend Sadie, Tillie starts a business, making kits for poorer women to be able to sew their own clothes, using patterns rather like the ones my own mother used to buy, to sew for herself and her family.
I always love learning the ‘back story’ of a place, a company or industry, and Threadbare provides so much of the history of ‘Gilded Age’ New York – which was anything but gilded for its poorer citizens, especially women. Contraceptive devices and abortions were illegal then and made life so much harder for poor women and their families – something that Tillie herself experiences. There is also the scourge of diseases such as tuberculosis and women’s cancers, at a time when germ theory was a relatively new idea and surgical and other medical treatments still far from those we would recognise today.
Especially vivid in Threadbare is the way in which women in business were ignored, patronised, or ridiculed. Tillie’s husband must accompany her to meetings with potential business partners even though the ideas being pitched were hers and Sadie’s.
As in the best historical fiction, Threadbare offers opportunities to learn about the past while enjoying an engrossing story about believable and sympathetic characters. The ups and downs of Tillie’s life had me cheering her on, metaphorically speaking, and hoping that the many obstacles lined up against her could disappear. They don’t, of course, but in the process of her dealing with them we see what determination and courage look like.
As always with such stories, I drew particular pleasure from the fact that Tillie is inspired by the author’s real-life great-grandmother, Mathilde, who had arrived with her family from Germany in the 1860s. I can’t think of a better way to honour an ancestor than by writing a book inspired by their life!
Threadbare is published in 2024 by Level Best Books.