Organiser Girl

In London in 1865 Lydia Frankland finds a love letter written twenty years earlier by her late stepmother, Jane, to a natural historian at Port Arthur, Louis Lempriere. In the letter Jane confesses she is in love with Louis.

Lydia is horrified at her stepmother’s apparent infidelity, and begins to read Jane’s diaries. In them she finds more details about the time the family spent in Van Diemen’s Land all those years ago, when Lydia’s father, Sir John, was governor there. She reads an account of a macabre murder involving two convict boys; of horrible experiments conducted on prisoners held on the island; and of Jane’s obsession with Darwin’s theories of evolution.

Lydia realises there are secrets in her family’s past, and she sails to Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania – to unravel these mysteries. There she finds out more about her stepmother’s friendship with LempriŠre, and is forced to confront the fact that her father, whom she had believed a hero, upheld a sadistic regime in the penal colony. She is also transported back to a world where Charles Darwin’s theories were emerging and threatening to take over long-held religious beliefs.
In this historical novel, Simpson intertwines real historical events and figures with her own fictions, to ‘map the silences’ that traditional history leaves untouched. She masterfully weaves the reality of the darkness of Van Diemen’s Land with brilliantly realised imaginings of the past on this remote island at the end of the earth.

When I picked up this book in the library I had no idea what it was about. It was the title and the cover that drew me in. I picked up the book and had a quick glance at the first page, the font was a nice style and the size was great (yes, these ARE things that convince me to read a novel!).I have to admit, that I did have some expectation of the novel, purely by the fact that the author’s name is Kazuo Ishiguro. I made a connection to other Japanese authors that I have read (Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto) and assumed that the novel would be set in Japan, or at least some Japanese elements in it. Surprisingly it didn’t.

I’m not going to reveal what the story is about, but I will comment on the style of the writing. The characters were great, a lot of time and effort was put into the development of these, as well as the relationships between the characters. The story is set in the UK, in the past it seems, but its more like some sort of alternate reality. Perhaps a reality that could have been, if things were different following certain major events in history. This book left me with a lot to think about, it’s certainly not a light read. That being said, it’s written well, the language used is certainly not threatening/challenging to read. I recommend this book.

A humorous account of the perils of post-relationship bachelorhood. Named as one of 1994’s best books by Geremie Barme, who said: “In the cruellest and blackest comedy, it helped me adjust my mind to the Twilight Zone of life after love.’’ (3 December, 1994, Sydney Morning Herald.)

www.jimschembri.com.