Love and Survival: ‘A Great Act of Love’ by Heather Rose
Heather Rose is an award-winning Tasmanian author with a range of published works across an astonishing array of genres: contemporary environmental thriller (Bruny), character-driven literary work set in a major art museum (The Museum of Modern Love), memoir (Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here), to name just three of her earlier books.
A Great Act of Love extends that range into historical fiction, as she tackles a story inspired by her own family history, returning again to the island that is her home.
Caroline Douglas comes to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemens Land) in 1839 in the guise of a young, wealthy widow with a young boy in her care as ward. She has left England after great tragedies, in which her entire world had been lost to her. She settles beside an abandoned vineyard on the outskirts of Hobart Town and tries to make sense of this upside-down world of convicts, their guards and administrators, other exiles like herself, and those who operate between the lines of order and chaos.
She has her own secrets, which are gradually revealed as the novel progresses. Secrets about her own family and about herself and her real reasons for choosing a tiny isolated speck on the map as her new home. Secrets about the reason she tries to revive the neglected vineyard on her property and dreams of establishing a champagne product to rival that of France.
Caroline quickly realises that almost everyone she meets has their own secrets and desires and she must navigate her way between truth and lies in order to survive and to progress her own goals. There are dark deeds afoot, here in this place of exile and enslavement and genocide.
Seeing white men enslaved brought Cornelius no balm. Cruelty was a boundless cycle of suffering that deserved no allegiance.
A Great Act of Love, ebook version p192 of 433There are different stories told from various perspectives: Caroline’s own, her father, her aunt, a Commandant of another penal settlement at Norfolk Island, an escaped slave from the Americas, and others. Readers get insights into what is driving Caroline and others, through these carefully meted out nuggets of information. We test and re-test theories as the novel progresses; this keeps us engaged and committed to uncovering the truth.
The setting is beautifully conveyed: an island colonised by a people who think little of killing, imprisoning, punishing other humans. But also a place of great, wild beauty.
The theme of love underlies the entire novel, but also of strength and survival and vision:
As he watches her walk back across the field in her new boots of kangaroo skin he wonders if she is yet accustomed to the sensation of the world having flung her adrift. Mostly what he’d seen of people was a yearning to take away the dread of uncertainty. To be content in the smallness. But some people seem to harbour greater thoughts. Mrs Douglas, he thinks, is doing all she can to manage this unfamiliar life and to make something of it.
A Great Act of Love, ebook version p197 of 433A Great Act of Love was published by Allen & Unwin in September 2025.
African adventures: ‘The Napoleon of Africa’ by Phil Smart
As an historical fiction lover, I was asked to review this recently published novel set in early 19th century southeastern Africa. Knowing very little about this part of the world or its history, I was intrigued. Also, I am always happy to hear from new authors. Putting a book out into the world takes hard work and commitment!
The story is about three youngsters, siblings from a British naval family, who in 1815 become stranded on the coast of Africa after a violent storm at sea. They assume that all others on board the ship, including their parents, had drowned and that they must try to survive in a very alien landscape on their own.
A dramatic start; a good hook by any measure.
Their presence is discovered by another youngster, local Zulu lad Mandlakhe, who befriends the three: brothers Nathaniel and Andrew and their younger sister, Beatrice. However it’s not long before they come to the attention of the Zulu warrior and chief Shaka, who cannily sees the political and military advantages of taking these stranded children into his care.
Another huge advantage for Shaka is that the eldest sibling, Nate, is already a shining star at the Royal Naval Academy and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of military history and the ins and outs of battle strategies across various eras. Shaka absorbs this information like a sponge: it fits into his ambitions to conquer more territory and become a great ruler of the Zulu nations, not merely a local chief.
From here the narrative is told from multiple perspectives, encompassing the multiple storylines that unfold.
There is Shaka and the others in his compound, including his favourite witchdoctor, various family members and members of his military forces.
There are the Cowen siblings, a fascinating part of the story with their own skills, passions and goals, as they become a part of the Zulu community.
There are machiavellien characters and subplots involving the acting Governor of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique; an English sea captain with plans to make it rich through trading with newly discovered or colonised territories; and assorted rival African chiefs with their own plans of conquest and rule.
There are aspects of this novel that I enjoyed and others that bothered me a bit.
There are elements of writing craft that I thought need some attention – fair enough, in a debut novel – though the author certainly knows how to tell an engaging story.
I was uncomfortable with the presentation of British (and other European) colonialism as an opportunity for personal advantage. Of course, this was certainly the attitude of the time and what attracted many to the colonial and trade game – the opportunity for adventure and making a lot of money. This book presents these attitudes perfectly, but there is no invitation for readers to reflect on what that meant for the local people in those colonised and exploited territories.
There is also an unabashed admiration for military ‘greatness’ – the title alone hints at this. Once again, an accurate representation of attitudes at the time: maybe it still is for some. I continually question this. Why do we persist in admiring mass murderers (Napoleon, Alexander the ‘Great’, Shaka himself…) and counting them among the ‘great’ figures of history? Sure, they may have been brilliant strategists or military leaders. However, they were also ruthless killers with an indifference to the consequences of their ambition.
That’s my personal view of course, and I brought that with me to the reading of this novel.
There were things I liked very much about the book, too.
The setting, for one. The author has been to this part of Africa and I understand he fell in love with the place. It was this that inspired his writing. I’ve not been there, so I can’t judge the accuracy of his setting, but his descriptive writing brought it very much to life for me.
The characters also feel believable and I enjoyed Beatrice, in particular. Her development from a frightened child to a capable and assertive young woman is beautifully portayed. And her friendship with the Zulu boy Mandlakhe is a lovely aspect of the story overall.
I liked how the author skillfully wove into his story real characters and events from the time – always welcome in a work of historical fiction.
If you enjoy adventure stories set in past times and perhaps unfamiliar settings, you will enjoy The Napoleon of Africa. There is a lot in this book to keep readers absorbed and turning the pages.
The Napoleon of Africa was published by Phil Smart in 2025.
My thanks to the author for a copy to review.
You can contact Phil at
www.philsmartauthor.com.au
Through Nancy’s eyes: ‘The Scent of Oranges’ by Kathy George
When I was eight, my mother took me to the cinema to see the newly released film adaption of the hit musical Oliver! How I loved it. I think I became a little obsessed by the songs, the setting, the characters: innocent young Oliver, played by Mark Lester, the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild), Mr Bumble (Harry Secombe), the villainous Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and Fagin (Ron Moody), and lovely, cheeky and caring Nancy (Shani Wallis).
I do, however, also remember being rather traumatised by the (spoiler alert) murder of Nancy. That scene on London Bridge, with the grey dank tenements of Dickensian London all around and Nancy’s headlong rescue dash with Oliver – only to end in her death at the hands of her lover – well, it affected me deeply. When I think about it now, it was possibly my first introduction to the awful fact that there was such a thing as what we now know as ‘intimate partner abuse’ and that it can and does lead to women’s deaths.
Since that time I have read the original Oliver Twist as penned by Dickens, but I must admit that scenes from that 1968 film have stayed with me too.
So I picked up Kathy George’s 2024 retelling of this classic tale with interest. In The Scent of Oranges we see the events and places through the eyes of Nancy, and are privy to her thoughts and feelings about her life.
I appreciated that this author did not attempt to give Nancy a twenty-first-century kind of ‘agency’. She is still a prostitute, pimped out by the deplorable Fagin and Sikes, living in the kind of grinding proverty that would erode the hope and joy from most lives. However she is able to articulate, if only to herself, some cherished hopes and small pleasures, and her reactions to the things that happen to and around her.
The orange in the title is a symbol of the occasional, tiny glimpses she has of beauty and the marvellous gifts of the natural world – although she only ever tastes the fruit twice in her short life.
Nancy in this version is nothing if not pragmatic, acutely aware that her future holds little to look forward to – despite meeting and falling in love with a gentleman who treats her kindly and promises her a better life. This book does not change Nancy’s fate, so readers who are familiar with the original story know in advance that this promise can never be fulfilled. Still, we cheer for Nancy and celebrate her few small, hard-won successes.
My only quibble with the novel is the use of vernacular spelling and terms for Nancy’s voice: ‘wot’, ‘carnt’, ‘innit’ and so on. For some reason I found this a bit jarring.
But that’s a small niggle. Overall the novel does a great job of bringing to life the London of Nancy, the Dodger, Fagin and Sikes, in all its filth, energy and struggle. I very much appreciated seeing a version of the story through Nancy’s eyes.
The Scent of Oranges was published by HarperCollins Australia in 2024.
Strangers on a train: ‘The Paris Express’ by Emma Donoghue
Brilliant historical fiction, The Paris Express invites readers to join a group of disparate strangers as they ride the Paris Express train through Normandy on an October day in 1895.
Based on a real event, and peopled with fully-drawn characters (many of whom were on the actual train on that day) the novel takes us into their worlds: among others, a wealthy man and his family, a Black American artist, a young woman performer in a Parisian cabaret, a boy travelling alone for the first time, a female student of physiology, a young pregnant woman, and many of the crew and staff of the train and the French railway company that operated it.
Among the hundred or so passengers is also a young, fiercely political woman who has vowed to strike a blow against an unfair world that treats the poor like expendable commodities. She has it within her power to destroy the train and its passengers as they hurtle towards their destination.
The story is well paced: the tension ratchets up as the journey proceeds, and we learn more about the people on board and their interactions with each other. What will happen to these strangers? Will they survive this journey?
The brilliance of the novel lies in the author’s ability to capture a moment in time: late-century French culture, commerce and politics under the microscope of this one journey. Vivid details of the way the train crew operate this complicated piece of machinery and the conditions under which they work. The worlds of art, literature and theatre of the late 1800s. References to empire and the government. The early technologies of photography and a nascent ‘moving pictures’ industry. Developments in transportation: motor cars; and the seed of an idea that would eventually become the underground Paris Metro. Women taking up study and work in areas such as medicine and science.
The turbulence of the time is brought to life through the characters: deeply held political convictions; the fear engendered by violent acts carried out by anarchists in major European cities such as Paris; the growing feminist and suffrage movements; a sense of the old world disappearing as the nineteenth century draws to a close.
This book is a thriller because it is very hard not to care about the characters and their fates as the train continues on its high-speed way to Paris. It is brilliant historical fiction because the real is blended so skillfully with the imagined, that we can’t tell the difference and don’t really care, as the story is so engrossing. The author’s note at the end helpfully sorts out which was which and adds some poignant epilogues to the real-life historical figures.
I listened to the audiobook version, beautifully read by Justin Avoth, who inhabits the characters’ voices with great aplomb.
If you enjoy historical fiction, you are sure to love The Paris Express.
The Paris Express was published by Picador in March 2025. The audio recording published by McMillan Digital Audio in 2025.
No happy endings: ‘Mercy’ by Emma Woodhouse.
A Newton takes their own life, or that of another.
So says the curse of the Newtons.If you have read some of my other blog posts, you may have realised that I am a bit of a sucker for historical fiction that is inspired by, based on, or closely follows real-life people, places and events. Mercy is one such story, narrating in fictional form the true-crime saga of a working-class English woman who, in the 1840s, was charged with murder.
Her case became the talk of folk in inns and on streets across the land. Did she commit the terrible crime she was accused of? Did she deserve to hang? Or was she a victim of the brutal environment in which she was raised and the inequality between rich and poor?
The notoriety of her name grew as not one, but two juries were unable to deliver a verdict. This was unheard of. It was up to a third and final jury to pass judgement on a woman accused of a most heinous crime imaginable. Would she be found guilty? And what would become of her young daughter, raised in the same harsh milieu as Mercy herself?
The other reason I was drawn to this story? The protagonist’s family name, which I share. While not believing for a moment that my name holds within it a curse as Mercy’s seems to have done (and honestly, given how events played out in her family you can understand how that idea came about), a novel centred around a cursed family name is always a little intruiging…
The author has used historical documents from the archives and old British newspaper reports to skillfully weave a story told from three main points of view: Mercy herself; her daughter Maria; and the local justice of the peace who prosecutes the initial murder case against Mercy. This gives rich detail of the events as they were reported at the time, while also painting a vivid backdrop of the grim environment in which they occurred.
And it is grim. There is little or nothing held back. The story opens with an earlier murder, this one perpetrated by another Newton, Mercy’s cousin John, who beats his pregnant wife to death one stormy evening. It sets the scene and as readers we know that despite an occasional glimmer of hope on the horizon, the future for Mercy and her family is, in reality, nothing but bleak.
For me this bleakness became a little too much and I found the novel hard going because of it, while still admiring the detail and story-telling skill involved. As a tale that paints a realistic picture of how things were for working-class folk in Victorian times, it’s to be commended. Just not an easy read. And don’t expect a happy ending in the usual sense, because for these people they were few and far between.
Mercy is published by Cranthorpe Millner Publishers in July 2025.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a review copy.
A nod to the gothic: ‘The Midnight Estate’ by Kelly Rimmer
I’m a bit of a sucker for ‘book within a book’ stories. Done well, they can have you intruiged from the moment you realise there is a connection between the two seemingly unrelated narratives. Think Magpie Murders which added a delightful dual-timeline component as well as two murder mysteries to solve.
Australian author Kelly Rimmer writes excellent historical fiction, often weaving together legacies from the Second World War with modern-day protagonists in very moving ways. The Midnight Estate is a little different, although here, too, past events cast long shadows over the present.
Fiona Winslow moves back to country NSW after an emotionally exhausting year, planning on restoring the crumbling mansion that belonged to her beloved uncle and was once home to herself, her mother and her cousin. Since her uncle’s death it has stood empty and neglected and she is faced with a mammoth task, not helped by inexplicable opposition by her mother towards her plans – and rumours in the town that the house is haunted.
While cleaning and sorting her uncle’s old furniture and belongings, she comes across a box of books, sent by the publishers to her uncle, who had been a famous award-winning writer. As she begins to read The Midnight Estate, Fiona is puzzled, then intruiged by apparent similarities between her family’s story and the novel’s. Her uncle’s name is not on the book, but who wrote it? And why do some of the characters resemble people she knows?
The old mansion house, while a beautiful haven for Fiona as a child, begins to feel less welcoming, as she begins to piece together parts of a family story that go back a generation. There are dark secrets that must be uncovered before Fiona can reconcile what she thought she knew about herself and her family with what she learns, and finally feel that she has come home at last.
There are enough creaks in the night for The Midnight Estate to feel like an old-fashioned gothic mystery. However, the novel’s theme deals with an enduring and contemporary issue, that of coercive control and intimate partner violence; skillfully done and very believable.
The Midnight Estate is published by Hachette in July 2025.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a review copy.
Bringing history to life: ‘Free’ by Meg Keneally
Meg Keneally’s first stand-alone historical fiction Fled (published 2019) was inspired by the true story of Mary Bryant, a First Fleet convict who effected a daring escape from Sydney by boat. This was followed up by The Wreck (2020) which featured events that followed on from the notorious Peterloo Massacre in England, and introduced readers to Mary Thistle – a character inspired by another amazing historical figure, Mary Reibey. It is Molly Thistle who is at the centre of Fled.
The novel opens with young Molly, living in poverty with her grandmother in England. When she is sent to work as a scullery maid in a wealthy household and find herself bullied and compromised by the master’s valet, she sees no option but to escape. But she does it on horseback – on the master’s valuable mare, and dressed as a boy.
This part of the story echoes something of the origins of Mary Reibey, who was arrested at a very young age for horse theft (and also while dressed as a boy.)
From here Molly experiences all of the horrors of the British ‘justice’ system of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The courts where the poor had no voice. The appalling overcrowded gaols where men, women and children were thrown together, and survival of the fittest was the only rule that mattered. Molly quickly learns the rules, adapts – and survives.
On arrival in Sydney Town Molly is rowed upriver to the Parramatta Female Factory – another gaol for female convicts, which also served as a workhouse, maternity hospital and a ‘marriage market’ (where free settlers and emancipists could come in search of a wife.) I enjoyed the scenes here, as the author, like myself, has an ancestor who was an inmate of the Female Factory. Ms Keneally is a Patron of the Friends of Parramatta Female Factory and gives great support to their work.
Molly’s fortunes take a turn for the better when she marries Angus Thistle, a free settler whom she met on the transport ship. For many convict women, marriage was often the way to a better future, although to the small colonial society at the time, taking a convict wife was still frowned upon. A mistress? Perfectly acceptable and very common for military officers, free settlers and emancipists. Even a governor. Having a wife and family back in Britain was no impediment for a man taking a convict women to his bed and fathering a whole new gaggle of children in the colony. But marrying her? That was often seen as a step too far.
Molly was no simpering, decorative accessory to Angus. She works just as hard as he. Early in their marriage they build a wattle-and-daub hut together on the banks of the Hawkesbury, the wilder reaches of the colony, where the river bursts its banks and destroys farms and homes with unpredictable ferocity. Molly experiences this.
She also learns about the ferocity of the so-called ‘frontier wars’ between the original people of the region, fighting to protect their land and livlihood, and the invaders, determined to make the place theirs. Some of the stories turn her stomach with their cruelty and make her look at her fellow settlers with new, jaundiced eyes. She befriends an Aboriginal woman with a baby, just like Molly’s own new baby, and finds the stories even harder to stomach, begging Angus to move them back into Sydney to live, away from the violence.
So they do, and their family grows along with their fortunes, as Angus and Molly’s trading and ship building business flourishes. If you visit Sydney today and walk along Circular Quay to where the old warehouses are, you might imagine Molly visiting their warehouse, admiring the many different goods that Angus brings home from his voyages to far-off places. Goods that the settler communities – those with money to pay – crave: Indian muslin, tea from China, spices, wooden furniture, fine china and glassware, tobacco, the latest fashions from London…
It is Molly’s business acumen, organisational and financial skills that allows their commercial interests to prosper despite ruthless competition from other traders in the colony.
The novel includes references to the many characters and events that made Australia’s early colonial years so colourful: a succession of Governors, a military coup, corrupt officers and venal landowners, a hypocritical churchman, all fictionalised but easily identified. This is perhaps one of my hesitations about the novel. On the one hand I do understand that peopling the story with a fictionalised version of historical figures gives the author more room to play, so to speak, to move people and events around to suit the narrative; on the other hand I think it can add richness and depth to the story to have these people live in their own skin.
Anyway, that is a minor point and each writer of historical fiction makes their own judgement about this when it comes to the story they want to write.
And the story of Molly Thistle is a beauty, as is the story of the woman she was inspired by – Mary Reibey. As I wrote in my review of Grantlee Kieza’s terrific biography of the real Mary, The Remarkable Mrs Reibey, there are some overlaps between her story and that of my own convict ancestor, Jane Longhurst, another early colonial woman who survived the convict years to become a wealthy and successful businesswoman, in a place and time when being both a woman and an ex-convict should not have allowed it.
Meg Keneally has brought Mary’s world to us in a different form, through another woman’s story. As I often say, the early history of modern Australia is quite an extraordinary one, much more interesting than I remember from my school history lessons! Stories like this help to bring our true history to life.
Free was published by Echo Publishing in 2024.
Book or movie? How about both?
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan was a book mentioned to me by no less than three people in the space of as many months. They extolled its virtues: a tiny book that speaks so much in its brevity; leaves you thinking about it long after you close the cover, etc… I borrowed a copy and immediately I saw what they meant.
It is, indeed, a slim volume at just 110 pages. Published in 2021, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize the following year. It’s one of those books where much of the ‘action’ is interior, inside the main character’s head. In this case, the head of Bill Furlong, father of five in a small Irish town in 1985.
He’s the town’s coal and timber merchant and his days consist of work – loading up pallets of wood and bags of coal, driving his small truck to deliver them to the homes and businesses that rely on his wares to keep warm through the bleak Irish winters – then home to scrb the black coal dust from his hands and eat a meal in the tiny kitchen with his wife Eileen and their five daughters.
He’s a good family man, quietly spoken and thoughtful. Occasionally he finds himself wondering ‘is this all there is?’ when he contemplates life’s purpose. But he knows he and his family are more fortunate than many, they have a loving home and food on the table.
Still, he is troubled by flashbacks to his childhood, so different to that of his daughters. Raised by an unmarried mother who died when he was just a young lad, he was lucky to be allowed to stay on at the home where his mother had been employed by a wealthy woman. A woman with more enlightened views on unmarried mothers, he realises now, as an adult. The other figure in his childhood was Ned, also an employee on the property, a man whom Bill looked up to and admired. Bill never knew who his father was: no one talked about things like that.
His quiet, predictable routine is severely disrupted when, while delivering coal to the Catholic convent, he stumbles across a teenaged girl locked in the coal shed. The nuns insist it was an accident that she was caught there overnight – on a freezing night in the lead up to Christmas – but Bill is not convinced.
So begins a period in which this quiet man wrestles with his conscience. The convent and the nuns who run it wield a power over the town: the neighbouring school, which Bill’s daughters attend, the choir, so much of the residents’ welfare seems to be inextricably linked to the church. As the publican says to Bill:
”Tis no business of mine, as I’ve said, but surely you must know these nuns have a finger in every pie.’ (p94)Bill realises that the entire town, his wife included, are complicit in what might be going on behind the heavy doors and walls of the convent. Turning a blind eye allows whatever cruelities and neglect to continue. And, as this story is about the horrors perpetuated by what became known as the ‘Magdalene Laundries’ of Irish Catholic convents, there were cruelties and neglect aplenty – from the 1920s right through to the 1990s, according to the film’s dedication. Horrific stuff.
So, this brings me to the film adaptation of this wonderful little book. I was keen to see the movie for several reasons.
One, because the two leading stars are Cillian Murphy of Peaky Blinders and Oppenheimer fame (and frankly he is such a compelling actor I think I would pay money to watch him watching paint dry!); the other is Emily Watson who is one of my favourite British actors. Although when I realised she was playing the clever, cold nun at the head of the convent I was at first horrified – but she is such a consummate actor that even her normally sweet face was transformed into something else entirely.
Two, I was curious to see how the filmakers would transfer a novel like this to the screen. How to portray Bill’s inner struggle when the raw material of the book is a tiny setting, a few days, a handful of characters?
The answer, for me, was – brilliantly. The director Tim Mielants and cinematographer Frank van den Eeden capture the bleak grey of the Irish town in winter, the way the townsfolk ‘unhappily endured the weather‘ (p1), the routines of everyday life. There’s a scene in which the camera pans over Bill’s face – beautifully half lit by a street light as he sits in his darkened house, alone in the deep of night – and we can almost see the thoughts move across his face.
Best of all, for me, was the choice of scriptwriter Enda Walsh and director to keep faithfully to Claire Keegan’s ending. It is a somewhat ambiguous climax: Bill has acted in accordance with his own moral certainty, we know it is the right thing for the young woman he rescues from the convent, but the book’s readers (and film’s audience) cannot be certain of the reception she’ll receive from Bill’s family and, indeed, the rest of the town. We hope, but we cannot be sure.
Some viewers at the cinema I attended apparently thought the film ‘too grim’ (accordingly to the cinema proprietor) but I was glad that the film reproduced the intent and tone of Keegan’s ‘perfect little book’ in the way that it did.
So, while I am sometimes disappointed in film adaptations of books that I have loved, this time I can honestly say: read the book AND see the film. Both well worth it.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan was published by Faber & Faber in 2021.
The film adaptation , a joint production by Artists Equity & Big Things Productions, was released in 2024.
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.
Love & magic for grownups: ‘Cherrywood’ by Jock Serong
If versatility is a sign of a writer’s skill, then Australian author Jock Serong’s latest offering proves he has bucket loads of the stuff.
From his earlier works of surprising, emotive crime fiction, to his trilogy of historical fiction beginning with Preservation, he has explored darker aspects of the human psyche and behaviour.
Cherrywood is different in that it is a playful work that evokes themes of deep magic, while setting the work firmly in the prosaic Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy across two timelines – early twentieth century and the 1990’s.
There are two main characters. Thomas is heir to a Scottish industrialist family fortune who gambles it all on a fanciful scheme to build a paddlesteamer to ply its trade across the bay in Edwardian-era Melbourne. The boat is to be built entirely from a load of beautiful cherrywood, whose mysterious provenance in eastern Europe forms part of the novel’s backdrop of vague menance. He travels to Australia in search of his vision, followed later by his loving wife Lucy and their young daughter Annabelle. Fortune does not favour either the family or his plans.
In 1993, Martha is a lawyer working for a major law firm. She is a fish out of water, being clever but saddled with a conscience, in a company and surrounded by colleagues without one. One evening she stumbles across the Cherrywood, a pub she has not seen before in Fitzroy. She becomes obsessed with the place, as it seems to elude her efforts to find it again. Gradually her future, and the hotel’s, become intertwined…
The novel has many layers, all seemingly disparate, but its brilliance is the way they all interconnect by the end. There is so much here about love, and vision, and endurance, loss and grief, about the ordinary lives of people and the hurdles we must all overcome. The magic underlying the cherrywood motif is beautiful, subtle to begin with, intruiging enough to have this reader want to push on, to find the clues, to figure it all out along with Martha.
Readers familiar with Melbourne will enjoy the author’s descriptions of both the early years of the city and the version of thirty years ago. The Cherrywood of the title is very much at home in both.
Cherrywood is a novel that works as a modern fable, as historical fiction, as a love letter to Melbourne, as a romance. It’s a complex and beautiful novel.
It was published by HarperCollins in 2024.
