6/27/2023 0 Comments Bridie's Fire by Kirsty Murray![]() Halfway through the book, at a very climactic chapter-end, we learn that Bridie is eleven years old. ![]() I will be interested at some point to read the others in the series. Questions of class and gender and the delights and limitations of relationships across all these groups of difference were kept complex, when it is so easy to write a feel-good version where none of that matters. The book also tried to honestly and respectfully portray the diversity of the people who made up early Australia instead of working under a homogenised whiteness. There were systems of injustice that made this unnecessary famine and the book was upfront about that. ![]() It was also good that the book did not attempt to be apolitical or to individualise the suffering of the characters. ![]() Awful choices had to be made and people were scarred by their choices. The complexity of loyalty and an individual journey I thought were well plotted. I wasn't so keen on the portrayal of the theatre people's relationships but up until then I had thought Murray had done very well to balance horrors and devastation with moments of hope and the relationships that feed survival. ![]()
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