The Historian's Daughter Rashida Murphy

 

This is a novel about how a person’s history follows them through life. Those little things that happen, the fleeting moments, the overheard whispers all form a trail to the person we become. Ranging from the Indian Hills to Perth, Hannah’s story slowly reveals the moments in her past that have made her who she is.

Entertaining all the way through, The Historian’s Daughter deserves a second volume, because there are many questions left unanswered. Occasionally there were moments when I wasn’t quite sure what happened and reading back over, I still didn’t find the answer. Nevertheless, the fact I wanted to go back to find out is testament to the depth of the story. 

Rashida Murphy’s prose is eloquent and multi-layered and I recommend her novel to literature lovers.

Madam Midas by Fergus Hume

      

           Like a suave character from his novels, Fergus Hume at the time he wrote Madam Midas and Mystery of a Hansom Cab

     Madam Midas is an enjoyable read despite being laden with melodrama. Well written and at ease with itself, there’s an effortlessness about Fergus Hume’s style. Melbourne and Ballarat circa 1888 are depicted vividly with plenty of social commentary, especially on the plight of women, rich and poor, who survived at the mercy of men.  Good and bad men, gentlemen and cads and cads disguised as gentlemen, all attempt to control the women in their lives. It’s all here in the seedy streets of the city where if a woman failed to hold on to her virtue, she was a mere step from prostitution.     

     Hume slings arrows across a broad sweep of society and includes sharp commentary on the back-patting philanthropists who built alms houses with their names upon them, but never entered the real slums. 

     “Professional philanthropist…who does his good deeds in a most ostentatious manner, and loudly invites the world to see his generosity, and praise him for it. He never did good by stealth.”  Who knew virtue signalling was a thing in the 1880s.

     

     The reader might expect a work written in 1880s to be bogged down by convoluted prose, but this is not the case. Just as in Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Hume weaves a tale of intrigue and suspense. If you are interested in Australia during the Victorian era, Madam Midas is a for you.