Alix Christie, the author of that great historical novel, Gutenberg’s Apprentice, wrote that ‘the historical novels I admire inhabit their worlds so fully that as a reader I feel I’m breathing the air of that distant place or time. This has less to do with historical detail than with a freshness of language, tone and incident that makes the concerns of the characters so recognisably human that they feel almost contemporary. The ability to transport us into different minds is a hallmark of good literature generally; the bar is set even higher when a story’s setting is truly foreign.’
Long Bay by Eleanor Limprecht is worthy of such admiration. Limprecht invites us into the life of an underprivileged woman living in Sydney about 100 years ago. We see, hear, smell and feel that bygone Sydney through the eyes of Rebecca, a vividly realised character. What she does, and what happens to her, is based on the life of Mrs Rebecca Sinclair, who would have unquestionably approved of her portrayal here were she still with us today, as some of her descendants are.
This novel can be read for the sheer enjoyment of a good yarn. The author does not moralise but still leads us convincingly through the dire circumstances and social injustices that lead some women to become prostitutes and some men to become drunken hooligans, though not every woman and man subject to the exigencies of the poor and uneducated of the time follow such a path in this book.
Rebecca’s mother is a proud woman who refuses charity and works her fingers to the bone to keep her family fed and together. Bread and treacle is a special treat. Rebecca’s intellectually challenged sister is treated with love and understanding by the rest of her family but not by society. Her story and that of Rebecca’s other siblings enliven the plot.
Australia has come a long way, though not all the way, to legalising abortion. In Rebecca’s Sydney there was no mercy for the abortionists who saved the lives of many women. Eventually, through the circumstances so lucidly described in the novel, Rebecca finds herself in Long Bay jail. Anyone who has visited a modern-day prison will recognise some of the wardens.
The details of existence as a prisoner in that time and place are the results of meticulous research, as are the glimpses of period Sydney, as when Rebecca takes the ferry to Manly or has the temerity to enter David Jones.
This is a novel worth reading more than once.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5 stars
Long Bay
By Eleanor Limprecht
Sleepers Publishing
$24.95 RRP
