Wendy James

Set in Victoria in the early 1900s, OUT OF THE SILENCE has been republished by Momentum in digital format. This novel won the 2006 Ned Kelly for Best First Australian Crime Novel. Given that Wendy James has now written a number of other books, not only is this a chance to look back at an extremely worthy award winner, it's also a chance to look at back at the work of an author who specialises in sensitive looks at difficult subjects.

Whilst the packaging might be suggesting something a little on the romantic side, and the subject matter pertains particularly to women, this novel is a clever combination of true history and fictional stories that would work for all readers. The fictional stories revolve around two women - country girl Maggie Heffernan and immigrant Elizabeth Hamilton. Although from considerably different backgrounds, both women find themselves in need of work and a way to support themselves in early Melbourne. In a time when the most basic of women's rights were still being fought for by the fledgling Suffragette movement.

Maggie's story starts out in rural Victoria where, living with her family, she longs for something more than that the destiny of country wife and mother. When she meets Jack Hardy part of her sees him as a way out, part of him simply falls in love. Despite all his promises, when she discovers she is pregnant, Hardy is nowhere to be seen.

Elizabeth lost her true love, killed in a tragic accident in the UK, she emigrates to Australia with the promise of a job as a governess. When that job isn't all she hoped for she returns to Melbourne, to live with relatives, and work as a teacher in a specialist school for young women where she encounters the fledgling suffragette movement and Vida Goldstein. Goldstein, a real-life figure, is one of the leaders of that movement, and a passionate believer in the rights of women. It's through Goldstein that Maggie and Elizabeth's lives collide, after she takes up the case of Maggie's murder conviction after her baby is found, drowned in the Yarra River.

OUT OF THE SILENCE is a slow burner book that switches backwards and forwards between the two women's stories. It's a careful and pointed look at the nature of the society and the avoidable circumstances that can tragically lead to murder. In particular it looks at the restrictions and expectations forced on women by others. Whilst it might be easy to dismiss this as "women's fiction", this book does something very clever, very subtly. It personalises the pressure. It shows clearly how unfair the double-standards about unwanted pregnancy were, how restrictive the expectations of women "in their place". It takes all of that out of the realms of history and right into the lives of two women who, because of the skill with which James writes their stories, feel very real. Not surprising that it won the Ned Kelly really.

A giveaway for this book is open for another few days.

I still remember the profound sense of disquiet that WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? left me with, and Wendy James has done it again with THE MISTAKE.

There's something about Jodie Garrow that I suspect is going to trigger differing responses in readers. Personally I couldn't get past a very obvious sense of Stepford Wife syndrome. She's a socialite, immaculately made-up, coiffured, dressed to the part of the wealthy wife of a high profile husband. There's the perfect family - a boy, a girl, a modern house. She's a big fish in a very small pond - a metaphor that extends as the plot of the book expands and, in Jodie's eyes, she's increasingly surrounded by the sharks - media, friends, mother-in-law. Even the supportive, but ultimately unfaithful husband. There's obviously a lot wrong in Jodie's life and it seems that the revelation of the illegal adoption all those years ago has suddenly bought all that's bad to the surface.

It's also distinctly possible that Jodie is everything that's wrong in Jodie's life, and this author has done a particularly good job at confusing that possibility. Is Jodie the ultimate unreliable narrator, or is the media frenzy, the trial by public opinion, more what's going very very wrong in this woman's life? Why has she stepped back, wrapped herself in what seems oddly passive acceptance, why doesn't that quite stack up against the revelations of Jodie's background and her determination in other areas of her life? Add a philandering husband who does seems to be stepping up to help, a rebellious teenage daughter, and there are cracks in this perfect life that widen with every page.

The point of view moves around between Jodie, her husband Angus and sixteen-year-old daughter Hannah. The timeframe also changes between the present and 1986 when the missing baby was born. The main voice however is always Jodie. As everybody else reacts and deals with the circumstances, Jodie alone knows the full story of what happened to baby Else Mary. Yet somehow her story doesn't quite ring true - whether or not that's because the media hype is winning, or whether or not there is something wrong in what Jodie is saying is not all that easy to decide.  

It was hard not to be struck by the coincidence of finishing THE MISTAKE just as a Northern Territory coroner declared that a dingo did indeed take baby Azaria Chamberlain. Hard not to think of the hysterical media and public speculation that went on around that case, hard not to consider the mindless obsession with looks, clothes, demeanour.  

In THE MISTAKE, once again, James takes the reader into some very interesting territory. The book is definitely almost pitch perfect psychological thriller, and it's going to be very discomforting reading for some people. It's sneakily challenging, disconcerting, compelling, car crash fascinating, and probably one of the best fictional reminders I've had in a while that public and media opinion should never be mistaken for the justice system, regardless of the ultimate outcome.