Dirrayawadha

Anita Heiss is a best selling, award winning Australian author. She also happens to be a Wiradyuri woman, and in Dirrayawadha (Rise Up) she explores the troubled, tragic history of colonisation around the Bathurst area, Wiradyuri country.

Dirrayawadha centres on a love story between a Wiradyuri woman, Miinaa, and an Irish convict, Dan O'Dwyer. But Dan and Miina work for a pair of white settlers, and Miinaa's brother is the famous warrior Windradyne, who led the First Nations resistance in the eighteenth century. Love, joy and loyalty are inextricably intertwined with brutality, loss and tragedy.

This is an important story, and we need more stories about colonised Australia that centre the First Nations point of view. Heiss also draws an interesting parallel between First Nations dispossession and  the history of Ireland, also violently colonised by the British. I'm not aware of any Irish political prisoners, like Dan, who could clearly see the comparison between the two, but it's a fascinating idea that gave me food for thought. Like Melissa Lukashenko's Edenglassie, this book also includes many First Nations words.

In some ways, Dirrayawadha adopts a modern sensibility, perhaps intentionally, which might help a wider readership more easily relate to the power dynamics of the historical situation. Expressions like hyped-up, maintaining autonomy, racism, culture, self-worth, and you don't get it might be anachronistic, but if they gain this novel more readers, I'll swallow it.

Highway 13

One of my favourite kinds of novel (is it a novel?) consists of short story collections where the stories are linked -- by a single character, like Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, or by a theme or an historical event, as is the case here. The twelve stories in Highway 13 revolve around a series of murders in the Australian bush, which bear striking parallels to the so-called Backpacker Murders executed by Ivan Milat. In Highway 13, the murderer is Paul Biga, of Polish extraction (Milat's father was Croatian), but his crimes are very similar -- hitchhikers and tourists picked up by the side of the road, taken into the forest and brutally murdered. I should add that neither the murderer or his crimes ever appear directly in any of the stories, but their off stage presence looms ever more powerfully because of it.

Highway 13 reminds us that the effects of crimes like these ripples out far beyond the victims themselves. We meet a 'tourist,' ghoulishly obsessed with the murders; true crime podcasters; someone who knew Biga's sister-in-law; the brother of a missing woman; one of Biga's neighbours; someone who managed to get away; a police officer who worked on the case. The stories swoop across the years, before and after the crimes were committed, and across continents.

I absolutely loved this book. Each story is beautifully written, shining a different light on something very dark: moving, clever and compassionate. Superb.

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

I enjoyed this book SO MUCH. It was a rare adult recommendation from my kid-lit book group, but Suzanne and I share very similar taste so I knew it would be a winner. Despite being born in Melbourne and practically exactly the same age as me, AND writing YA, I weirdly haven't come across Alison Goodman before -- but I will definitely be seeking out more from her now. 

It's not quite accurate to call The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies a romp, because it does deal with some quite dark material -- husbands imprisoning and trying to poison their wives, child sex trafficking, and rape and torture in madhouses -- but Lady Augusta Colebrook is a splendid heroine, at 42 a lively and indomitable spinster, independently wealthy, highly intelligent, courageous and daring. Her twin Julia is slightly less bold, but also brave and resourceful, and Gus meets a man worthy of her in Lord Evan Belford. Unfortunately he's an escaped convict and in dire peril of the gallows, but hey, he's really hot and surely he was unjustly convicted (a problem for the next book).

Goodman says she fell in love with Regency settings after reading Georgette Heyer as a child, and she is clearly in command of her historical material. The little details of daily life are fascinating -- like the way posh people would put tea in the pot themselves, to avoid being cheated by their servants -- but they never weigh down an action-packed, exciting plot which turns on the horrendous treatment of women in early nineteenth century  England.

Hanging out for more books in this series, and I will also check out Goodman's earlier books, The Dark Days Club trilogy.
 

Would That Be Funny? Growing up with John Clarke

It's hard to believe that John Clarke died way back in 2017. I can still feel the shock and hollow grief when I heard the news, sentiments shared by many others, as his daughter Lorin Clarke attests. Like the many strangers who have accosted her, I also 'grew up with him,' I also 'loved him so much' that he felt like a part of my family. From Fred Dagg monologues on The Science Show to the brilliant satire of The Games and of course the regular Clarke and Dawe interviews, it felt as if he'd always been part of the furniture.

Would That Be Funny? is a gorgeous tribute to a unique talent, a man filled with gentle mischief and rapier-sharp wit, who delighted in pricking the pomposity of authority and in playing with words and absurdity. The Clarke family home was a place brimming with in-jokes, wordplay and laughter. (Yes, says Lorin, he was just as funny at home.) We also learn about Clarke's rather unhappy childhood, lost youth and eventual rescue by friendships forged at university and his long supportive marriage (albeit low-key on the romance front, to the frustration of Lorin's sister Lucia).

Lorin Clarke is herself best known for the hugely successful Fitzroy Diaries, similarly grounded in everyday observations, quiet humour, gratitude and the quirks of ordinary people. Even if she wasn't John's daughter, she seems like the perfect person to memorialise Clarke the human, complementary to Clarke the comic genius. I stumbled across this book by accident on the shelves of the good old Athenaeum, and I'm so happy that I did. I can't believe that I hadn't heard anything about it before. (It was published in 2023.) Highly recommended.
 

Crow Country

 

Every year I visit several schools to talk about my YA novel, Crow Country. It's a time slip story that deals with issues of First Nations culture and history in a small town in rural Victoria, set partly in the present and partly in the 1930s, and since it was published in 2011, schools have found it a useful text to set, usually for Years 7 or 8.

Is it weird that occasionally I've found myself struggling to answer tricky questions from students, because I can't quite remember all the details of the story I wrote almost fifteen years ago? I thought it might be time to refresh my memory, so I reread it. And I'm relieved to say that it stood up pretty well. There were a few passages that I couldn't remember writing, things I knew I wanted to say but thought I might have left out -- there's quite a lot of material in there. If I was writing it today, I might do it slightly differently, but I'm pleased that on the whole, there isn't much I'd change.

Phew.

Understory

  

Inga Simpson's Understory is an irresistible mix of personal memoir and nature writing. She begins the narrative with an account of finding a property on the inland Sunshine Coast with her partner. At first all goes well. The family discover the local wildlife, adjust to their leaky, creaky home, and make their home. Each chapter begins with a description of a species of local tree, which ties into the memories which follow. But a growing sense of dread begins to pervade the pages, as Simpson and her partner, N, 'begin to make some bad decisions,' buying the property next door, starting a business, and realising their property is under threat from a proposed powerline development.

The tension in this book builds like a thriller, which makes an unusual contrast with the more meditative style of most nature writing. I actually had to flip to the end to make sure everyone was going to be okay (I don't do well with suspense). There are also flights backward in time to Simpson's childhood, and earlier stages of her life (not among trees) which cast light on her reactions. I had previously read and loved Simpson's novel, Willowman, not coincidentally featuring woodwork and cricket, but Understory made me appreciate that novel even more.

Ultimately Understory is a moving, sometimes devastating personal story intertwined with beautiful vignettes of connection with the forest, as well as with individual trees and animals, as well as Simpson's own writing and publication journey. I loved it all the more for being so thoroughly Australian.

The Sitter

When I was younger I loved big fat novels that I could lose myself inside for days, but these days I've become a fan of the slim novel. Angela O'Keeffe's The Sitter fits the bill, in fact it's so slim that when I was looking for it on the library shelf, I overlooked it at first and had to go back and search more carefully. But sometimes slender books can pack a hefty punch (eg Cold Enough For Snow, The Gate of Angels) and The Sitter beautifully weaves together big themes in relatively few pages.

The story is partly told by Hortense, the wife of Paul Cezanne, who sat for 29 portraits, and the subject of a novel being written by an Australian writer, currently stuck in Paris in 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic. We see the unnamed writer (she later calls herself 'Georgia') in her hotel room; writing about Hortense, who is watching her; writing an email to her daughter in Sydney. All these narratives intertwine to build layers of reflection about art and story, points of view, love and sacrifice, men and women, distance and closeness, darting between France and Australia.

These very short novels can behave almost like poetry, each line carrying more weight than it might in a longer narrative. The Sitter is an accomplished, graceful work, easy to read but hauntingly sad.

As Happy As Here

Jane Godwin is becoming (in my mind) one of those reliable authors whose books you can relax into, knowing that you're in safe hands for the journey. As Happy As Here, like Look Me In the Eye (though it was published earlier), features a trio of girls aged around thirteen, one of whom is more troubled than the other two. In this book, Evie, Lucy and Jemma are thrust together in a hospital ward, and while there is a mystery to solve and danger to face, the real focus is on the gradual friendship that stutters between the three of them. Evie and Lucy are comfortably middle class and secure in their parents' love (though Lucy has lost her mum, and is also facing her own health battles); but Jemma is an unwanted, lonely child who displays her insecurities in undesirable behaviour -- lying, stealing, being rude. But Godwin is skilful in helping the reader to understand the challenges that Jemma faces, even though she's not easy to be around.

Godwin captures precisely the atmosphere of a busy hospital, the constant activity, the fact that even the nights are never truly dark or quiet, the close but brief relationships with nurses and physios, the boredom, the discomfort. The mystery plot is clever, too, even though it ends in a shocking way. And there are big questions sprinkled throughout -- about fate, and choices, luck and kindness.
 

Sensitive

Thirteen year old SJ (formerly Samantha) has just moved to a new town, a place where no one knows her shameful secret and she has a chance to start again. Maybe here in Kingston, she can be cool, and pretty, and carefree? Things begin well: SJ makes a new friend, Livvy, and a cute boy is paying attention to her. But her secret can't stay hidden forever...

SJ's shameful secret is her skin. Like Webster herself, SJ has terrible eczema which flares up unpredictably, and also severe allergies, not all of which have been identified. She reacts to grass, to the flowers the class dissects in science, to eggs, and who knows what else. Her worried mother puts her on an exclusion diet which eliminates almost every food, but SJ can't stop scratching, and she's tortured by the thought that people might guess that under her clothes, her skin is a red, painful, itchy mess. And what if the cute boy wants to kiss her? He'll be repulsed!

Sensitive draws heavily on Webster's own experiences; she almost died (twice) as a result of her conditions. Some of the strategies in the story seemed outdated to me, and it was hard to believe that a contemporary family (especially with a librarian for a mother) who avoid Dr Google so completely. My heart really went out to SJ and her family (and by extension, to Webster herself), and of course anything that makes you different, and especially look different, is all the more agonising at thirteen. Sensitive would be such a useful, compassionate book to give any child or adolescent suffering from skin complaints

Fixed It

Ten years ago Jane Gilmore, fed up with the reporting of men's violence against women, came up with a brilliantly simple and effective way of highlighting the defects in headlines. Her project, Fixed It, took off on Twitter and is still going strong, and I'm sure has led to at least some change in the way that reporters and editors choose to describe crimes against women and children. A typical example: POLICE CHARGE YOUNG MALE WITH ILLICIT ATTACK ON YOUNG MOTHER became MAN CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTED RAPE OF A WOMAN. As Gilmore points out, softening the crime of attempted rape to 'illicit attack' is misleading at best and at worst reduces serious crimes to the level of 'a schoolyard incident.'

This book is a few years old now but it feels particularly timely with the current spotlight on men's violence. Gilmore's focus is on the way media chooses to report this topic, but this book also gives a useful summary of men's violence against women and other gender issues in sport, politics, pop culture and the legal system. Fixed It shows the power of a simple idea -- that red pen correction of offensive and inaccurate headlines has become iconic. In a way it makes depressing reading because we clearly still have a long way to go, but it's encouraging to note that change is occuring. Although when I hear about the growing influence that misogynists like Andrew Tate have over young men and boys, I do despair. One step forward, two steps back? Let's hope not.
 

Look Me in the Eye

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book, it seemed that it might be a vaguely dystopian story about surveillance and online data, but it isn't really about that at all. Look Me in the Eye focuses on three friends -- well, two good friends, Bella and Connie, who have just started high school, and Connie's slightly older cousin Mish, who becomes an unwilling companion to the others after changing schools under a cloud.

The plot of Look Me in the Eye might seem fairly low-stakes. Mish is up to no good, having contact with a mysterious older man. She shoplifts and tells lies, and does her best to evade her father's attempts to keep tabs on her. Bella's mum is pregnant and her new partner Pete has just moved into the family's ramshackle house. Connie has a fragile younger sister, who might be at risk from Mish, and Mish herself seems to have stopped eating. Pete's valuable swap card goes missing. Did Mish steal it? Bella doesn't know what to believe.

Low-ish stakes, perhaps, but by the end of the book I was totally caught up in the suspense of the story and desperately hoping for a good resolution. Mish's father is a domineering and controlling character who exudes a genuine sense of threat, and Connie's complicated position, torn between competing loyalties, is subtly drawn. I really enjoyed Look Me in the Eye, which also describes a world immediately post-pandemic, a world of masks and germ-phobia and general nervousness, where lockdown memories are vivid, a world which is already receding into history.

My Sister Rosa

I finally caught up with Justine Larbalestier's 2016 novel, My Sister Rosa (thanks, Athenaeum library). Larbalestier likes to dance on the dark side -- Razorhurst featured legions of Sydney ghosts in the gangster dominated 1920s, Liar centred on a murderous unreliable narrator. My Sister Rosa is about a bad seed, a malevolent manipulative psychopath -- who happens to be a cute ten year old girl. How far will she go, and can her big brother Che stop her in time?

This is a sinister story, raising uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil and morality. Is Rosa irredeemably wicked, or is she just a child with some issues around social adjustment? Rosa is very good at picking holes in other people's arguments, pointing out correctly that everyone else also lies, sometimes takes pleasure in others' misfortunes, wishes people dead, and puts their own interests first -- so what's wrong with her doing it too? And what about Che? With the same family genetics and upbringing, is there a chance that he could be the same as Rosa? His mother is concerned that Che loves boxing, which as far as she's concerned, is just pure violence. Is there a difference between violence in the ring and on the streets? (On this issue, I think I'm on Sally's side rather than Che's, but it's clear Larbalestier is a boxing fan.)

My Sister Rosa doesn't have a happy ending, and there's a twist that I didn't see coming which raises even more awkward questions. As well as a family and friendship drama, the novel also contains a beautiful love story and a peek into the world of the super rich. It would make a great Netflix drama.

Seeing Other People

I was equal parts jealous and admiring of Diana Reid's whip-smart debut, Love and Virtue, partly because I was also working on a novel set in the first year of a university residential college, and she'd taken all my best material! In Seeing Other People, the stakes feel lower, though really, what could be more important than being in love, and family?

The spiky triangle at the heart of Seeing Other People consists of two sisters, Eleanor and Charlie, who both fall in love with the same woman, Helen. But there are other complications, in a Sydney summer of beach swims and share houses, backyard parties and theatre auditions. It's eminently readable, clever and touching, and as the cover art suggests, sits comfortably alongside Sally Rooney and Nina Kenwood (albeit for a slightly older audience than Kenwood's books).

BUT! I was appalled by the sloppy editing which really irked me -- I noticed break instead of brake; discrete instead of discreet; hairbrained instead of harebrained. My daughter scolds me for my pedantry and says I should chill out about the fact that language changes. I can accept that, up to a point, and I'm struggling to relax about it, but perhaps my 'braking' point is here.

Green Valentine

I'm a big fan of Lili Wilkinson; she has got better and better with every book. From my observation, her career has gone through three phases -- the early quirky rom-coms, the serious 'issue' novels, and now she has embarked on a rich and colourful fantasy series (which, like Green Valentine, centres on plants).

Published in 2015, Green Valentine is, I think, the last of the quirky rom-coms, a genre which Wilkinson perfected with books like A Pocketful of Eyes, Pink and The Zigzag Effect. Though thoroughly enjoyable, it's perhaps not her strongest entry, and maybe it's significant that after this she turned to darker subject matter. Gardening has always been a passion of Wilkinson's and in the author's note she says she wanted to write a book about gardening that wasn't 'totally boring.' With guerilla gardening at midnight and a delicious romance, she certainly achieved that, and the message that solutions aren't found with a single silver bullet, but from hundreds of small ideas, is still extremely timely.

Green Valentine is an uplifting story about hope and making change and community, and it would be a great antidote for a young person who might be feeling despair about the future of our fragile world.
 

Holiday Reading

 Choosing the books to take on holiday is where having a really tall to-be-read pile comes into its own. I would never take library books away with me, particularly when I'm planning to read beside a pool -- anything could happen!

So I picked six books from my stack and stowed them in my suitcase -- believe me, they took up way more room than the clothes I brought with me. I chose mostly secondhand volumes so I could take risks with them, and indeed, I left a couple of them behind in the house bookcase for others to enjoy.

The first book to be finished (almost finished on the flight to Cairns, in fact) was Monica Edwards' The White Riders. This was a fun, horsey adventure where Tamzin and her friends pretend to be ghosts, or demons, or something scary anyway, to frighten away developers who are building a holiday camp on the marshes. As a child I adored the second volume of Edwards' Romney Marsh series, which features only Tamzin and Rissa, and I remember my indignation when I came across a later book which included BOYS. However, I've now grown used to Meryon (hot, dashing, descendant of a pirate, clearly going to be Tamzin's romantic interest when they get a bit older) and Roger (Rissa's cousin, nice enough, but just making up the numbers). I enjoyed The White Riders but I don't think the idea of dashing around dressed in white sheets has aged particularly well...

Next up was Ramona Koval's By the Book, part memoir of her own childhood and adult reading, and part rumination on books and reading in general. As someone who for many years hosted the ABC's Book Show, she had lots to share about the joys of reading and some fascinating stories to tell, such as the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah (which I think is the basis of Geraldine Brooks' novel, The People of the Book? Haven't read that one). This was a perfect holiday read, interesting but light.

Next I finished Mary Stewart's Touch Not the Cat, passed onto me from a street library by my friend Sian. This novel rang bells with me, the cover proclaimed it as a Number 1 International Bestseller. I thought I might have read it as a child when my mother borrowed it from the Mt Hagen library, but the publication date of 1976 makes that unlikely. Now I think I might have read part of a serialised version in the Women's Weekly or New Idea. I definitely remember being intrigued by the title. Anyway, Touch Not the Cat is quite the melodramatic tale, involving telepathic lovers, a maze, a neglected mansion, coded messages in antique poetry, and a pair of sinister twins. Also perfect holiday reading! (This is exactly what my copy looked like, too, by the way...)

Another old favourite author was next, also rescued from a street library: Mary Wesley's A Dubious Legacy. However, this was not my favourite Wesley title. There was the usual knotted plot, psychological surprises, eccentricities and refreshing sexual frankness, and even the reappearance of some characters from previous stories, but A Dubious Legacy was irreparably marred for me by an instance of animal cruelty played for laughs, and also a factual inaccuracy -- she has children watching Dr Who in the summer of 1990, when any serious follower of the Doctor knows that the show went on extended hiatus from 1989 till 1996. Sloppy research, Mary!

Last, but definitely not least, was White Night by Ellie Marney. A rare stand alone novel, White Night is set in the country town milieu that Marney knows well, and -- I was going to write, there's no violent crime in this book, but that's not exactly true! However, White Night is at its heart a story about love, the ties between people, and friendship. It's narrated by Bo, a sixteen year old boy becoming a man, who falls for Rory, the 'feral' girl from the mysterious community on the town's fringes. I loved the way that Marney lets us, the readers, fall in love with the Eden community just as Bo does, before its flaws become obvious to us all. Thoroughly recommended (as usual).

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens

I've been on the waiting list to read Shankari Chandran's Chai Time At Cinnamon Gardens for so long, it's probably time for the new winner of the Miles Franklin Award to be announced. There was even a reserve list at the Athenaeum! But my turn eventually arrived at good old Preston Library.

Despite waiting for so many months I'd lost count, I did not take advantage of this time to find out anything at all about the novel. I think I'd assumed from the title that it would be something like The Thursday Murder Club or those books set in nursing homes -- sorry, aged care facilities -- where people climb out of the windows (extremely unlikely in the aged care homes that I'm familiar with). The cover also led me to believe that this might be a gentle, whimsical story with quirky characters and a heart-warming ending.

Well, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens was sort of like that -- but also not like that at all. To begin with, much of the story centred on the civil war in Sri Lanka, a period of history I'm ashamed to say I knew absolutely nothing about. This brutal and bloody background colours the experience of several characters, and reminds us how many refugees and migrants to this country have come from such horrific situations. Towards the end, the novel becomes quite polemical in sketching an all-too-plausible white reaction to the Sri Lankan facility in their midst -- I'd like to be able to say it seems a little over the top, but alas, it's probably not extreme enough.

Chai Time was a much darker novel than I anticipated, including domestic violence and racist attacks as well as scenes of torture and slaughter, though there are indeed uplifting relationships and quirky characters. It's definitely a story of modern Australia and a worthy winner, a book that deserves many readers. With reserve lists this long, it's defiitely finding them.
 

Some Shall Break

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a HUGE fan of Ellie Marney, and I gobbled up her previous FBI novel, None Shall Sleep, with ravenous glee. Inspired by Mindhunter (which I also loved) and set in the 1980s, these books feature earnest Travis Bell, trainee FBI agent; damaged but resilient Emma Lewis, who escaped from a serial killer; psycho but charismatic monster, Simon Gutmunsson, and his oddly charming twin, Kristin. Some Shall Break sees our team on the track of a copycat, and ends on a beautiful loose end which I'm sure will be the subject of book three (thanks to social media, I know that Ellie is working on book three right now!)

The Shall novels hit a particular sweet spot for me, in that they deal with horrific crimes (rape, murder, abduction, torture) so the stakes are always very high; but they are not so graphic that I get disturbing images seared into my brain. I don't enjoy reading about real world pain and suffering, and I don't enjoy reading about imagined pain and suffering either. But perhaps because these novels are YA, they skirt the margins of the worst crimes, leaving the details mostly to our own imaginations (or not, if preferred; which I do).

I cannot wait for book three. Crack on, Marney!

Cold Enough For Snow

Jessica Au's award winning novella, Cold Enough For Snow, was the other extra book I picked up from the Athenaeum Library last week -- at less than a hundred pages, it doesn't really count as a book, right? 

Wrong. Reading Cold Enough For Snow is like taking a leisurely swim in cool, still water -- bracing, but refreshing. It's a meditative little book, following a trip to Japan by a mother and grown up daughter. The daughter reports their small excursions, interspersed with memories of her childhood, working in a restaurant, travelling with her husband to his childhood home. There's no plot. We observe the weather, the path through the woods, the museum exhibitions; we see the daughter's attempts to please her mother, usually not guessing exactly right; the book seems to be about our essential inability to really know other people, the way they are sealed inside themselves, occasionally revealing glimpses of their inner, private lives, and perhaps our inability to know ourselves. (This theme echoes the similar preoccupations of Virginia Woolf, who I was reading about at the same time in Square Haunting.)

I admired Cold Enough For Snow and I can see why it's won so many accolades. It's unusual and pleasurable to experience a novel so different from so many contemporary novels with their emphasis on 'hooking' the reader from the first page, delivering non-stop action or plot twists. Au's book is a reminder that novels can also be small and quiet and beautiful and thoughtful. I think Cold Enough For Snow will stay with me when some novels are quickly forgotten.
 

Prima Facie

Prima Facie is based on the hugely successful one-woman play by Suzie Miller, which took London and other cities by storm; I've heard rave reviews from people who have seen the film of the performance, and there is also a separate film version being planned. This novel adaptation by the same author has also received overwhelmingly positive reviews. There was a long queue of readers waiting to check it out at the library and I've had to wait a long time to get my hands on it. 

So I know I am in the minority when I say that I was disappointed. I kept waiting for the story to take off and it never really did. Apparently the play is extraordinary, and the bones of the story are compelling -- a defence barrister finds herself on the other side of the legal process as a victim of rape -- and particularly at this moment in history, after the Bruce Lehrmann case and other high profile rape cases. But it never really translates successfully into a suspenseful or even particularly moving novel. The lead up to the rape consists of a lot of slightly plodding backstory, showing Tessa as a working class girl made good, but her shock at becoming the subject of court tactics that she has used herself just isn't very convincing. Perhaps I've paid more attention to these types of cases but I just wasn't shocked at the way victims are treated, or the horribly low conviction rates for sexual assault. One thing that I found irritating was the way Miller repeatedly skipped over court testimony -- 'I made a point and the jury reacted and I sat down in triumph' -- almost literally in those words! It almost read as if she couldn't be bothered making up actual dialogue in parts.

I'm pleased that the play and now the novel have drawn attention to the way that victims of sexual assault are traumatised all over again by the legal process, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and Prima Facie didn't quite work for me.

Edenglassie

There are thirty eight people waiting to read Edenglassie after me! I hadn't realised that Melissa Lucashenko started as a young adult writer, and though Edenglassie is an adult novel, Lucashenko retains the pace and immediacy and the emotional punch of the best young adult titles.

Edenglassie was one of the first names for the settlement of Brisbane, and the novel is set in parallel time lines, one in the present day and one in the mid 1850s, in the early days of colonial Queensland (still known as New South Wales). Lucashenko creates a vivid and all-too-real portrait of a place in transition, where First Nations people still outnumber white settlers and the two peoples are able to live together, sometimes in relative harmony and sometimes in brutal conflict. What sets Edenglassie apart is the steady focus on the First Nations characters: bold Mulanyin, beautiful Nita, resolute Yerrin, wise Diwalbin.

The parallel modern day storyline takes a more comic twist, but its links to the distant past keep it grounded. Edenglassie is one of the most readable and relatable accounts of early Australian settler society I've read, and I'm not surprised that there are eager readers lining up to consume it.