Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson

Nora’s recollections are partly her own, partly the result of being cared for on her return by a couple who had always lived nearby and so had known her and her sister since childhood, and partly recollections of stories she had told her housemates in London. Nora’s life has four distinct phases: growing up in Brisbane, bursting with sexual tension but no sex a childless marriage in Sydney, where she and her husband find a flat with the bohemians on Potts Point until he is able to move them into his mother’s house in the suburbs to see out the Depression divorce, a shipboard romance with a married man, an abortion, the end of sex, years in London sharing a house with two other women and the landlord and the return in old age to the empty family home in Brisbane, Grace having married late but now dead. Her father, whom she does not remember, dies when she is six and she lives with her mother, older sister, Grace, and brother, until he is killed in the trenches in France (which my grandfather, another Brisbane boy survived) along with Grace’s young man, and most of the neighbourhood boys. that she was born around 1900, in a typical ‘queenslander’ weatherboard house, on stilts, 14 steps up from the ground, in one of Brisbane’s many riverside residential suburbs.

The old woman, Nora, is older than the author – no, I’m not revisiting the path I took last week with The Weekend – and I got the impression her age was about the same as the year, ie. I was mildly surprised as I was reading by the gentle subject matter – an old woman reflects on her life when I was expecting something much more savagely political, like A Kindness Cup for example. I don’t have any excuse, Jessica Anderson’s name is there plain as day as they say, on the cover, but I had no reason (I thought) to look at it.Īstley (1925-2004) and Anderson (1916-2010) are of the same generation both from Queensland both moved to Sydney, and both continued, I think, to write about Queensland. And it was only when I got to the end and idly looked at some biographical details that I discovered I wasn’t. All the time I was reading this, I thought I was reading a Thea Astley. Brona’s AusReadingMonth Bingo, November 2019 –

Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson