Saturday 11 January 2014

The Women in Black

Hilary Mantel is right - this book by Madeleine St John is a pocket masterpiece, a jewel. Others describe the book as a comedy of manners, or a black comedy. Yes, true, but it is so insightful, so humane and oh so kind!

Where the era is concerned, Madeleine St John has 'nailed' it. I remember it well. I even worked in the scarf department on the ground floor of David Jones, Elizabeth St (the fictional Goode's Department Store) in the early 1960s, when I was a sixteen year old very similar to Lesley/Lisa. Having just completed the Leaving Certificate, on my way to Sydney Uni, I felt just the same as Lisa - my confined little world was expanding to embrace exotic individuals and life was full of exciting possibilities.

Madeleine St John took me back to the staff changing rooms, the staff entrance, cleaning the finger prints off the counter tops with metho each morning before the store opened (the author omitted that small detail - but then again, the Frocks Department was superior and did not have counters, like us). She reminded me that the class-conscious attitudes held by Sydneysiders about its various suburbs, and the geographic divide created by the harbour, is not a new phenomenon.

All those memories had faded, until I read this gem of a book, so cleverly structured, with seamless scene changes and not a word out of place. I marvelled that the author could recapture in 1993, and so perfectly, the life and times, the idiom and the cultural nuances from decades earlier.

I have one small criticism. Bruce Beresford's 'Introduction' should have come at the end, and Christopher Potter's 'Obituary' was superfluous. Text Publishing no doubt intended that Bruce's name, and his affectionate words, would enhance Madeleine's credibility and engage our initial sympathies towards her. Selected reviews indicate that this tactic backfired ... before they'd even read the first word of 'The Women in Black', some readers could only see the author as an eccentric. To me, she seemed brilliant, and very kind, if a lonely observer of life.

The book stands tall in its own right and may it long continue so.

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