They say if you can remember the 60s you weren’t really there. But what about the 70s? Or the 80s, if yours had much in common with the 70s described by a writer like Mira Robertson in her latest novel, Grace and Marigold?
This novel is the second from Robertson, following The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean from 2018. You may be more aware of her as a talented screenwriter and script editor, co-writing both Only the Brave and the adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ Head On with director Ana Kokkinos in the 1990s.
In some ways Grace and Marigold covers similar terrain to both of those early films. It too revolves around young people traversing the landscape of love and friendships, and on the verge of discovering who they really are and the truth of their sexuality.
Grace is a 20-year-old running away from her Australian upbringing and looking to reinvent herself in the politically charged world of mid-70s London – where the possibilities seem endless, despite the ever-present threat of IRA bombings and councils looking to demolish squats and throw their occupants out on the street.
Living in one of those shared squats and finding a job in a dubious publishing house, Grace eventually begins to realise that the fierce feelings she is developing towards her magnetic but elusive housemate Marigold may be more than simple friendship. But does Marigold reciprocate those feelings or does she have even bigger secrets to protect?
Read: Book review: The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy
The novel was inspired by Robertson’s own encounters with the British counterculture during this period, and that lived experience certainly informs every page of a novel that is brimming with finely drawn characters, astutely observed milieus and an achingly credible depiction of the dual pain of unrequited love and internalised homophobia.
And if you too lagged Robertson by about a decade and wound up experiencing shared houses (rather than squats), in 1980s London (rather than 70s), but also remember that period as an awakening both painful and educational, this novel may strike chord after chord after chord…
Grace and Marigold, Mira Robertson
Publisher: Spinifex Press
ISBN: 9781922964045
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272 pages
Publication: 6 August 2024
RRP: $32.95
