Posts Tagged ‘ Melbourne ’

Review: Cyanide and Poppies by Carolyn Morwood (AWW Challenge 2013 #6)

cyanide-and-poppies-an-eleanor-jones-mysteryI read Carolyn Morwood’s Death and the Spanish Lady last year (and Gary the vampire and his librarian friend Lissa reviewed it), being a sucker for books set in my hometown, especially historical crime novels. That book was set in 1919, just after the Great War and during the devastating period of the Spanish flu epidemic. This story, set five years later, occurs on the eve of the police strike of 1923, which saw rioting in the Melbourne’s main streets.

The maxim that you should start in the midst of the action is taken to heart in Cyanide and Poppies, with the heroine, former nurse Eleanor Jones, kneeling by the body of a dead man in the offices of The Argus newspaper, where she is now a journalist, while waiting for the police to arrive. It’s perhaps a mite too abrupt as a beginning, but it certainly throws the reader into the midst of the business, both with Edward Bain’s murder and the difficulties of a police investigation while a strike is in place.

It also catches us up with Eleanor very quickly, including her change of profession and the ways in which her experiences in the war still haunt her. Her shell-shocked brother Andrew is still struggling with the return to life and Eleanor herself is still determined to deny and kill off her feelings for her unfortunately married friend Nicholas.

Much of the plot unfolds in a strangely muted fashion, reflecting Eleanor’s (and Andrew’s) own disconnectedness from things. The rest of the world intrudes on them, of course – sometimes in immediate and violent ways – but there is a sense of them both viewing the event around them at arm’s length.

But the mystery gathers momentum, including Andrew’s relationship with the vivacious but scandalous medium, Nadine Carrides, and Eleanor’s concerns and doubts about Carrides as well as her colleagues at The Argus. As it does so, there is a sense that the siblings’ lives are also gaining in momentum and purpose, and light begins to break on both the crime and their own relationships and engagement with their post-war world.

The book is elegantly written, with well-crafted characters and a wonderful capacity to evoke the Melbourne of the era. It’s always a pleasure to recognise parts of my town in a book, and even moreso to get a feel for those places in other times and atmospheres.

Cyanide and Poppies has a slow build to a satisfying finale that cracks open light and air on lives as well as mysteries, and that’s a pretty fine thing.

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

2013
04/15
CATEGORY
awwchallenge
Reviews
1 comment

Review: Capital by Kristin Otto (AWW Challenge #3)

For my third book of the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge, I decided to go non fiction, and picked up Kirsten Otto’s Capital. The book traces the political and social life of Melbourne from 1901 to 1927, the years that Melbourne was Australia’s capital city while Canberra was being built.

As you can tell from the dates, this was a tumultuous period of Australia’s history. The joy of becoming a single, federated nation with our own parliament led to a robust and thriving society. Patriotic feeling was still surging when hostilities in Europe broke out in 1914 and Australia went to war in support of Great Britain, still considered the Motherland at the time. The war years were brutal, but in many ways they helped to form Australia’s image of itself, and of course its image to others. Post-war reconstruction of a shell-shocked country occurred against events like the influenza epidemic that killed more people than the war had, and the police strike of 1923, which led to three days of rioting in the streets.

Before I picked up the book, I was hesitant, thinking it might focus on the political arena in those nearly-three decades. However, Otto has done a marvellous job of bringing the whole era to life. It’s not just the story of the men who built this city and nation. Significant men and women in politics, business, architecture, the arts and sciences are all followed.  The story of Melbourne is the story of people like E W Coles (of the Coles Book Arcade), HV McKay, Janet, Lady Clarke, Dame Nellie Melba, Helena Rubenstein, Violet Teague, Percy Grainer and his father John, who built the Princes Bridge, architects Walter Burley and Marion Mahoney Griffin and newsman Keith Murdoch.

Melbourne’s story is told through these ‘characters’, most of whom I know something about—but in these pages I learned more! Of course, these great entrepreneurs and philanthropists all knew each other, and names weave in and out of different aspects of the history. When some of them, and their sons, go to fight at Gallipoli or at the Somme, you feel very invested in their fates.  Sometimes it’s a little hard to keep track of everyone and how they know each other, and a fold out diagram of the names would have been helpful, at least for me.

Each chapter covers a chunk of years, and starts with a chatty precis about the significant events in those years. The tone is brisk and informative and occasionally humorous. In the first chapter, several pages are devoted to analysis and art appreciation of the two major portraits painted of the opening of Parliament in May 1901. In some chapters, she touches on how events are affecting sections of the Indigenous community, particularly the community that lived at Corranderk. Visits from folks like Harry Houdini and Nellie Melba’s frequent ‘farewell tours’ are all given space alongside the politics and business of the city.

Otto’s history is lively, and while it’s not delving into the everyday life, it gives an excellent account of the men and women who built and influenced Melbourne in the first three decades of Australia’s nationhood. Those names and their achievements still resonate today. If you are keen on Australian history, and on Melbourne in particular, this is a lovely addition to your reading.

From here, I need to find John Monash’s biography: he was an engineer as well as a general, and sounds like a thoroughly interesting man.

Capital is published by Text Publishing. You can get the book from them directly, as an ebook from Readings or as a Kindle edition at Capital: Melbourne When It Was the Capital City of Australia 1901-27.

 

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, iPhone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

2012
02/03
CATEGORY
awwchallenge
Reviews
writing
3 comments

Interview: Warren Bonett at Embiggen Books

Bucking the trend of bookshops closing down, Embiggen Books threw open its literate doors to the people of Melbourne in August 2011. Warren and Kirsty Bonett brought their arts-meets-sciences store from Noosaville in Queensland to Little Lonsdale Street, opposite The Wheeler Centre, for family reasons. It’s definitely a win for Melbourne!

I spoke to Warren in mid-August about Embiggen’s approach to life and its future plans.

Narrelle: What’s the philosophy behind Embiggen Books and the kind of books that you stock?

Warren: We focus on science as a pretty big area, but our primary thing is where the arts meets the sciences. Our MO, if you like, is a cross pollination of ideas. We got in a lot of neuroscientists to talk in the shop up north and we will do the same down here. They have a lot of things to say to people of all disciplines. You’ll find Proust, for instance, was particularly interested in the mind and there’s been a lot of cross-fertilisation between Proust and neuroscientists in the way that they think about thought itself and the brain.

N: What kind of ficton will you stock?

W: There’s quite a lot of science fiction in there, but what I’ve done is actually keep all of the different genres together from literature through to sci fi, horror and crime, because I think that the distinctions between the genres is shocking at best. It’s all a bit artificial. Science fiction or crime tends to become called literature after a patina of age has given it a bit of respectability.

Fiction is a good example of people being able to stumble across something that they weren’t really expecting to find or look for. Someone might come in for a Dickens and walk out with Doctorow instead. That idea, to me, goes to the heart of the store.

N: The store is making me think of Jules Verne, HG Wells and the whole Victorian era with that idea that the sciences and the arts not only don’t have to be separate but perhaps shouldn’t be separate.

W: I think they’ve both got to transform. Once upon a time you had the Renaissance-type individuals who didn’t really specialise but just applied thought to a wide range of disciplines. I think we’re at a point where that is almost impossible now. But some of my favourite artists and the most stunning artwork you’ll see today are coming out of people like mathematicians and engineers.

I think in some respects it behoves the arts to catch up with that, in that we can’t just rest upon our laurels and say “I’m a creative type, therefore I don’t have to pay attention to this stuff.” I think if you’re a creative type, it’s your responsibility to pay attention to this stuff.

So that’s my take on it, and steampunk and the Victorian era is really classic for it. The great icon of steampunk and in the sciences is Charles Babbage, possibly one of the top five most brilliant people the world has ever produced. His discoveries and his work are absolutely mindboggling, and he really did cross over between multiple genres. For instance, one of his favourite things was automata. That art that has really been lost, where you make a robot, effectively, out of clockwork.

I’d love to have some in the store and be able to represent artists that do the work in here. That would be fantastic.

N: Is that something you might consider in the future, having mini art installations?

W: Up north we actually did have a gallery attached to our bookshop. It just so happened that this space wasn’t really suitable for it. But we will conduct one and two day exhibitions, where we have a particular artist come in, some plinths and things through the store, by invitation only.

N: Is there anything particular you’d like to say to readers about your store and what they can expect of the experience?

W: It’s our mission to keep the culture of bookshops and having somewhere where you will be provoked in thought very much alive. We will have more events than most bookshops tend to, but we’ll bring in the people who are running the synchrotron or scientists from the Florey Institute in order to try make those things more accessible to people.

You don’t have to go to university or a specialised centre to see that. And that’s what we want to permeate throughout the shop. If you’ve got any ideas about anything that is worthwhile and rational and reasonable out there about the world, we want to help people connect with it.

***

Embiggen Books at 203 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne is open Monday to Saturday, and late on Thursday and Friday nights. Follow them on Twitter @EmbiggenBooks.

Embiggen is also now stocking titles from Twelfth Planet Press, including the first three 12 Planets anthologies, Nightsiders by Sue Isle, Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Raynor Roberts and The Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex. It also stocks Sophie Cunningham’s Melbourne. So what are you waiting for? Get yourself in to Embiggen Books!

2011
08/29
CATEGORY
Interviews
10 comments

Review: Melbourne by Sophie Cunningham

To begin with, I want to say what a beautiful object the book Melbourne is. When people go on about the texture, weight, feel and smell of real books in the e-book debate, this is the book they mean. Melbourne, written by Sophie Cunningham and published by New South Books, is exquisite. A small, solid hardback, its elegant dustcover sheaths a simple cream cover embossed in gold. It looks like a book made for princes. The inside cover is an old-style map of Melbourne with icons highlighting features of the city. The pages are thick, rough-edged paper which provide a real tactile joy.

An object as lovely as this book ought to have magic in its pages, and it does. Sophie Cunningham’s tale is part memoir, part ode to the city. I began by thinking the story was like some densely woven cloth, linking the past and present, connecting people and events across the city and time, but cloth is flat, and this story is deep and rich. So the Melbourne of these pages is more like close-growing plants whose roots go deep and intertwine, and whose branches and leaves mingle equally above.

It’s all a pretty poetic approach, but what the hell—the book has a beauty and poetry that go beyond saying “this is a neat and evocative book about Melbourne and its history”.  Cunningham’s personal history is revealed along with the city’s own story, and her emotional response to the places and people therein give the book real life and depth. Some of her experiences tally with or even cross over with mine, adding an extra tang of resonance.

Her story is full of extracts from essays, novels, emails and articles. The seasonal chapters flow from topic to topic, so that you may start with fruit bats in the gardens and end up at a book exhibition by way of Barry Humphries, football, TISM, indigenous history, Australian TV of the 1960s and the Victoria Markets. And every step leads logicially from start to finish. Along the way she talks about things I knew only in passing or not at all, adding to my own stash of knowledge about my adopted hometown.

New South has produced a number of books that give personal accounts of Australian cities, including the award-nominated Sydney by Delia Falconer. Cunningham’s Melbourne will surely be on upcoming lists. It sings a song of home to those of us who love this place, and perhaps may even explain that love to people who come from anywhere else.

Get Melbourne by Sophie Cunningham from New South Books  or from Readings, which also has it as an e-book.

2011
08/11
CATEGORY
writing
4 comments

Review: A Golem Story by Lally Katz, at the Malthouse Theatre

A GOLEM STORY Pictured Yael Stone Image credit Garth Oriander

A GOLEM STORY photo by Garth Oriander

I saw my first Lally Katz play in early 2000 at the La Mama theatre. It didn’t quite work for me at the time, but the ideas and execution were intriguing. Over the next few years, while Tim and I reviewed for our website, Stage Left, I kept seeing shows by Katz: Pirate Eyes, Dead Girls are Fantastic, Henrietta’s Last Safari.

I interviewed Katz  in 2001 and we talked briefly about what her shows might look like if a theatre with budget, experience and a uniformly talented cast took on the job.

Now, at last, with A Golem Story, I know the answer. Her show looks amazing. In the last decade, Katz has honed and matured her skills without losing that surreal, dreamlike quality she always wrote so well. The story is replete with both high drama and humour, and has a tone that is simultaneously childlike and profound. In the hands of director Michael Kantor, a fabulous cast, imaginative set design and gorgeous soundscapes, the result is really something magnificent.

A Golem Story is set in 16th century Prague when, as legend has it, the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel created a golem to defend the Jewish population from violence after they were accused of murdering Christian children for strange rituals.

At the heart of A Golem Story is one of Katz’s ‘lost girls’, who feature so significantly throughout her work. Aheva (Yael Stone) has been exorcised of the possessing spirit of her fiance, who committed suicide, but she is now without memory and, she thinks, without God. She is meant to work in the synagogue as a maid, but her world is confusing and full of mysteries. Things are being kept from her and no-one will tell her why her fiance killed himself or what she may have done to trigger it. Her role in assisting the Rabbi to bring the golem to life is pivotal to learning the answers to those questions.

Brian Lipson as the Rabbi is riveting, his stage presence an excellent balance for Yael Stone’s intense portrayal of the girl who yearns to know who she is and where she belongs. Greg Stone brings a rakish air to his Guard Captain while Mark Jones’s Emperor is a witty delight. The rest of the cast, which includes the wonderful Dan Spielman, also provide fine performances.

Jones also served as musical director for the production, and he has achieved something special. The Yiddish songs performed throughout by the cast provide an astonishing soundscape and add texture to the drama (and sometimes melodrama) of the production as a whole.

The wooden set, lit in part by candles and the shimmering spotlight that represents the golem, is a combination of clean lines and earthiness. Those contrasts capture the contrasts of the script and the characters. As always with a Lally Katz play, I am not entirely sure what to think of it as a whole yet. There are certainly comments in there about the monsters we create and then lose control of, and what those monsters may choose for themselves. These ideas can relate readily to the consequences we are already experiencing of modern technology, social media and biological engineering.

I have other thoughts, about women, knowledge, love and power, about victims seizing control of their own lives, about what happens when Frankenstein’s monster becomes self-aware, all percolating in my head. It’ll probably be a few days before they coalesce into something sharper, but that’s what I’ve always loved about the best theatre. You catch yourself thinking about it for days afterwards, sometimes much, much longer. This play is strange and beautiful and I’ll be thinking about it for a while yet.

It’s a joy to see one of Katz’s plays finally get the director, cast and crew who know how to get the very best out of it. A Golem Story is visually and aurally lush, engaging on its surface level and intriguing in its other layers. If you like stories about monsters and people, and especially about how they are sometimes the same thing, you should see it.

A Golem Story by Lally Katz is playing at the Merlyn Theatre at The Malthouse on Sturt Street until 2 July 2011.

Visit The Malthouse to find out more and to book tickets.

2011
06/15
CATEGORY
Reviews
Theatre
5 comments

Review: Little People by Jane Sullivan

Jane Sullivan draws on the true-life events of 1870, when a troupe of little people toured Australia. General Tom Thumb really did fall into the Yarra River and was rescued, and from this starting point, Sullivan creates a fictionalised account of their adventures.

Strange beliefs, secrets and mystery surround Mary Ann’s unborn baby. Who should she trust, and what will the truth mean for her, the child and the theatre folk on whom she now depends? Chapters from the point of view of the web-fingered governess, Mary Ann, who saved the General instead of drowning herself as planned, are interspersed with chapters narrated by the other players in the story. The General’s rival, George Nutt and Nutt’s brother Rodia; the General’s tiny wife, Lavinia and her sister Minnie.

Sullivan draws her cast with just the right touch of the outre and the humane. Her exploration of the little people reflects the time in which they lived and were treated as curiosities, celebrated but not always considered quite ‘real’. Web-fingered Mary Ann, a pregnant woman without a husband, is equally suspended between two views. Her determination not to be ‘tractable’ leads her to both trouble and to find her courage.

Little People draws on the arcane and bizarre, the same fodder for curiosities that fuelled sideshows, PT Barnums’ wonders and the science/fantast hybrid fiction of Jules Verne, HG Wells, Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stephensen. The book is also full of humanity and warmth, so that when all the arcane beliefs are taken away, the reader is left with a story of love and courage.

Buy Little People by Jane Sullivan.
Buy the e-book of LIttle People.

2011
06/05
CATEGORY
Reviews
Leave a comment

Review: Black Glass by Meg Mundell

Black Glass by Meg MundellMeg Mundell’s debut novel, Black Glass, is set in a dystopian near-future Melbourne. A friend recently asked me why so many books set in the future were dystopian. Thinking about it, I think that very few books (historical, present or future) are ever set in a Utopia. If everything is happy and perfect, there isn’t a lot of dramatic potential. A spanner has to be thrown in the works to get a story going.

Black Glass has multiple spanners and multiple works, but the two key ones are the lives of Tally and Grace, sisters who are separated at the beginning of the book by a violent explosion. As the book flashes towards an ending that is also violently explosive, it’s anybody’s guess whether the sisters will find each other again.

The story is told in fragments, echoing numerous images of shattered glass, from the sisters’ world suddenly blown apart to the abandoned glass factory that Tally later makes her home. Some fragments follow Tally’s story, others follow Grace, while yet others follow journalist Damon, the artist Milk or others who will eventually converge in the final pages.

The technique has a very cinematic quality, and sometimes has a very strobe-like sense of disorientation. It suits the world that Melbourne has become very well—a disjointed patchwork of zones inhabited by strict policing, manipulative power brokers, the correctly documented and the ‘undocs’, the definite ‘have nots’. And although it’s not an immediately recognisable Melbourne, I did enjoy the passing references to places I knew and places I could imagine.

Tally and Grace, and most of the people they meet, are undocs, scraping a living on the streets and avoiding both police round-ups and the nastier elements in their precarious world. Each sister falls in with a different circle of folks living on the edge, which gives Mundell ample room to explore issues of identity and control. Everyone we meet, whether undoc or legit, has competing interests, potential dangers and a need to hide part or all of themselves in order to survive.

Mundell’s style flows easily. The deceptively simple approach seems to gloss many things over, except that enough clues have been given that we know what is really going on without things having to be spelled out. These story shards seem slight at times, but they are sharp.

Dark but never hopeless, Black Glass is a fast-paced, intriguing piece of speculative fiction.

Buy Black Glass from Readings as a paperback or as an e-book from Booki.sh.

See the b0ok trailer!

2011
04/28
CATEGORY
Reviews
2 comments

GaryView: Dracula’s Cabaret Restaurant

Gary and LissaSnippets of conversation overheard during the evening…

Lissa: Thanks for coming with me tonight, Gary. You may have saved my life.

Gary: I thought you said it was just a work thing.

Lissa: It is. And I love my job, but I hate work functions. I never know what to talk about besides work.

Gary: … I know what you mean. I never even had a job to talk about.

Lissa: You and I always have lots to talk about.

Gary: I know.  <smiles>

Lissa: Anyway, I thought you might enjoy checking Dracula’s out.

Gary: I came here once before. In the 80s, to see what it was like.

Lissa: And what was it like?

Gary: Okay. I couldn’t eat anything, and I didn’t understand any of the jokes, and I was by myself so people kept giving me funny looks. But the decorations were really good.

Lissa: Well, we can keep each other company a bit this time.

***

Lissa: Gary, this is my boss, Beatrice.

Beatrice: So your Lissa’s mysterious Gary!

Gary: Ah. Yes. (looks at Lissa) Am I mysterious?

Lissa: Not to me.

Beatrice: But all she ever says is “I’m seeing Gary this weekend” but she doesn’t tell us anything about you.

Lissa: There’s not much more to say, is there Gary?

Gary: No. We get together and watch TV mostly.

Lissa: And talk.

Beatrice: I’ll bet there’s more to it.

Lissa: Gary and I are just friends, Beatrice.

Beatrice: ‘Friends’ is good, but (c0nspiratorially to Gary) it sounds like more than friends when she talks about you.

Gary: (deadpan) That’s because I’m really a vampire and Lissa and I sometimes get caught up in vampire business.

Beatrice: (roars with laughter and slaps Gary on the arm) I can see why you like him, Lissa! Good on you for getting in the mood, Gary!

Lissa: (trying to get the startled look off her face) Yeah, he’s a hoot.

***

Lissa: Gary, stop telling me what’s coming up in the ghost ride. It’s supposed to be a surprise.

Gary: But I can see what’s there.

Lissa: That’s because you can see in the dark. But you’re kind of spoiling the fun.

Gary: But you don’t really think it’s scary do you? It’s just animatronics and a soundtrack and Oh!!

Lissa: (dies laughing) You got scared by the wind machine!!!

***

Gary: I don’t get it.

Lissa: Well, I’m not going to explain it.

Gary: I mean, I know it’s a joke about sex. I just don’t know why it’s supposed to be funny.

Lissa: I don’t either, Gary. Never mind. They’ll be singing again soon.

Gary: The singing’s pretty good. Even though that’s not about vampires either. I really thought there’d be more vampire stuff in the show.

Lissa: They did the song from True Blood. That was cool.

Gary: Yeah.

***

Gary: Is that a chocolate coffin?

Lissa: It is! It’s delicious!

Gary: Smells good.

Lissa: You think it all smells good.

Gary: Yep.

Lissa: Tastes good too!

***

Beatrice: God, Gary, did you buy everything?

Gary: No. Just the programme. Lissa bought me the glass. See. It’s a skull with vampire teeth.

Beatrice: I know! I got one for Jean too.

Gary: That’s Mrs Beatrice, isn’t it?’

Lissa: Gary!

Beatrice: (laughing) I know it’s what you all call her, you know. It drives Jean nuts, but I kind of like it.

Jean: (grabs Beatrice by the hand) At my work, they call you Mrs Jean.

Beatrice: Oh, excellent. I like that too.

Gary: Nice to meet you both. Mrs Beatrice. Mrs Jean.

Beatrice: (roars with laughter) Seriously, Lissa, your friend is a hoot.

Lissa: Yep. (grins at Gary) He is.

***

Lissa: Did you have a good night?

Gary: I did. Thanks for asking me along.

Lissa: Thank you so much for coming. I had a good time too. And Beatrice thinks you’re awesome.

Gary: That’s because she thinks I’m joking when I’m not.

Lissa: Maybe. Still. I’m really glad you came.

Gary: Me too. Even if most of the jokes and music weren’t about vampires.

Lissa: At least you got a vampire skull drinking cup out of it.

Gary: And it flashes! (turns on the light switch at the bottom of the cup. They watch the vampire skull glass flash multiple colours and admire its schlockiness for a while.)

***

Dracula’s Cabaret Restaurant has been operating in Melbourne for over 30 years.

*For newcomers, the GaryView is a review of books/films/TV/entertainment carried out as a conversation between Lissa Wilson (librarian) and Gary Hooper (vampire) , characters from my book ‘The Opposite of Life’. Visit my website for more information.

2011
02/13
CATEGORY
Gary and Lissa
Theatre
vampires
2 comments

Review: Fall Girl by Toni Jordan

I’m a big fan of heist shows.  The Sting, Catch Me If You Can, the sanctioned heists of Mission Impossible, the doing-it-for-the-little-guy heists of Leverage, the for-the-hell-of-it larceny of Hustle. Even the cons in the gods-battling-to-rule-the-world story of American Gods. I don’t imagine I’d be as enamoured of a real life attempt on my worldly goods, though I flatter myself that I’m both too honest and too smart to fall for one, but I’m all for a fictionalised con artistry.

Toni Jordan’s Fall Girl is a delightful contribution to the genre. Dr Ella Canfield is an evolutionary biologist trying to get funding for research to prove that the Tasmanian Tiger still exists – and what’s more, is living in the Mornington Peninsula. Only of course, there is no such person as Dr Ella Canfield. Della, one of a long line of elegant con artists, is just trying to relieve millionaire Daniel Metcalf of some of the funds in the Metcalf Trust. She doesn’t expect he’ll miss it, really.

It turns out, however, that there are a lot of things she doesn’t expect, but they happen anyway. Like Daniel deciding he needs to see the scientist Dr Ella in action over a weekend before he hands over the cash. Cue a crash course in outdoorsy living and scientific method. But there’s definitely some odd things going on, both at home and out bush, and Della will have her hands full trying to sort it all out before the end.

It’s hard to comment without risking massive spoilerage, but it may be sufficient to say that Della and her family of con artists find that life is a lot harder to manipulate when you’re not always sure who is lying to whom.

There’s a delicious screwball humour about the whole story of Daniel, Della and Della’s misfit family. There’s also a warm sense of bygone eras about it – that whiff of the gentleman thief, like Raffles, the roguishly charming villainy of some Cary Grant films. Della’s family, living in their ramshackle old home filled with secret doorways and hidden rooms, belongs to a more chivalrous time than the one they live in.

It’s refreshing, too, to see a heist story from the point of view of a female protagonist, Della is sharp, funny, thoughtful and clever. Joining her on the journey to discover the layers of truths behind this simple job gone complicated, and her own family.

All these layers of lies and that sense of old fashioned chivalrous thievery are central to the plot and its resolution. This makes it more than a screwball romance or a heist story – it’s also a story about people and change and belonging. But mainly it’s huge fun and very engaging !

Fall Girl by Toni Jordan is published by Text Publishing.

2010
11/03
CATEGORY
Reviews
5 comments
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