Restless Dolly Maunder
Kate Grenville.
- London Canongate 2023
- 242 pages 21 cm.
Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors were finally starting to creak ajar for women. Born into a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, she spent her restless life pushing at those doors. Most women like Dolly have more or less disappeared from view, remembered only in a family photo album as a remote figure in impossible clothes, and maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe. Restless Dolly Maunder brings one of them to life as a person we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with. In this novel, Kate Grenville uses family memories and research to imagine her way into the life of her grandmother. This is the story of a woman born into a world of limits and obstacles who was able, though at a cost, to make a life for herself. Her battles and triumphs helped to open doors for the women who came after.
9781805302483 1805302485
Grenville, Kate, 1950- --Family--Fiction.
Women--Social conditions--Australia--19th century--Fiction. Male domination (Social structure)--Fiction. Poor families--History--Australia--New South Wales--19th century--Fiction.
Australia--Social life and customs--19th century--Fiction.