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Playing Beatie Bow
Distraught over her parents' separation, Abigail follows a strange child called Beatie Bow and time slips back a hundred years where she becomes involved with an Australian shopkeeper's family.
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 31, 1980
92 people are currently reading
1872 people want to read
About the author
Ruth Park
83 books113 followersRuth Park was a New Zealand-born author, who spent most of her life in Australia. She was born in Auckland, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas.
During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her.
Ruth claimed that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.
Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created The Muddle-Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).
Park received awards in Australia and internationally.
Winner of the Dromkeen Medal.
During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her.
Ruth claimed that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.
Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created The Muddle-Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).
Park received awards in Australia and internationally.
Winner of the Dromkeen Medal.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 336 reviews
February 7, 2017
I can't believe how long it took me to get through this book. It's only 200 pages and I *loved* it as a kid. But rereading it as an adult in a world where YA is a thing? This is...odd.
Admittedly, this book is older than I am - it was published in 1980 - and it's essentially a YA book that was written in an era when books featuring teenagers were shoved in with children's books. I remember reading it in year 4, and...I'm kind of astonished anybody let me read this at the age of 9.
The gist of the story is that an obnoxious 14 year old brat named Abigail finds herself in 19th century Sydney. She ends up staying with the Bow family, falls for the 19 year old son, gets kidnapped and fins herself in a brothel, survives a fire, manages to get back to 1980, and then four years later, falls instantly in love with a Bow family descendant who just so happens to look exactly like the 19 year old son.
Which, whut.
I wanted to love this like I did when I was a kid. But children's books (and YA books) have moved on so much in the past 37 years, and I just found this dragged on 5eva. Especially when Abigail was kiiiiind of the worst.
Admittedly, this book is older than I am - it was published in 1980 - and it's essentially a YA book that was written in an era when books featuring teenagers were shoved in with children's books. I remember reading it in year 4, and...I'm kind of astonished anybody let me read this at the age of 9.
The gist of the story is that an obnoxious 14 year old brat named Abigail finds herself in 19th century Sydney. She ends up staying with the Bow family, falls for the 19 year old son, gets kidnapped and fins herself in a brothel, survives a fire, manages to get back to 1980, and then four years later, falls instantly in love with a Bow family descendant who just so happens to look exactly like the 19 year old son.
Which, whut.
I wanted to love this like I did when I was a kid. But children's books (and YA books) have moved on so much in the past 37 years, and I just found this dragged on 5eva. Especially when Abigail was kiiiiind of the worst.
February 8, 2025
As an Australian my excuse for not having read this before is that I grew up in England and therefore did not read this at school as so many people did. I really love Ruth Park's books especially as I know Sydney well and can visualize the places she writes about. Playing Beatie Bow is set in the Rocks area of Sydney, and the references to local places are wonderful. Add to this the fact that the book features time travel which is one of my favourite things and you can see it has to be a winner for me. I enjoyed all of the characters, all of the descriptions of life at that time, and the clever little story which deftly linked the past to the present and managed to have a happy ending. Beautiful.
July 23, 2018
Fourteen-year-old Abigail is having a rough time. Her parents separated four years ago when her father left the family for a young girlfriend, but now he wants to reunite with his wife and move from Sydney to Norway. But her life takes a truly unexpected turn when she sees a group of younger children playing a game she's never encountered before, called 'Beatie Bow.' Another odd girl watches from the shadows -- and when Abby follows her, she finds herself transported a hundred years into the past.Much as I wanted to love this book, its primary effect has been to make me want to barf.
The story has a nice idea and goal. Abigail is very resentful of both of her parents -- her father for abandoning the family, and her mother for now wanting to forgive him and drop the life she's created for herself without him. The author wants to bring her heroine to an understanding of what drives adults to behave this way, and bring the family into harmony.
And some of the way this is achieved is pretty interesting. The Rocks area of Sydney is presented with fair historical accuracy so far as I can tell -- it's full of poverty and danger and illness. The Bow family, who take Abigail in for the duration of her stay in the past, are also realistically portrayed, both loving each other and getting on each other's nerves at the same time. And I'm not sure how long Abigail was actually supposed to have been stuck in history, but her hair grows a few inches and her figure "starts to come in" at last, so she does change physically as well as emotionally while she's there.
But I found the rest of the story to be a steaming heap of meh mixed with some points that made me just plain angry. Warning: Slightly spoilericious from here on!
Abigail is presented as a pretty unlikable character at the beginning of the story -- and why is she unlikable? Because she hasn't been kind and supportive enough to her mother, and therefore she must be a terrible person. And because she can't understand why her father had to dump his wife and child just because he fell in love with another woman. And maybe because she doesn't feel sorry for her father when it appears his girlfriend has now dumped him in order to move to Canada. (I don't feel sorry for him, either.)
So, despite the insistence that Abigail is in the past to perform a favor for the Bow family, the real purpose of the whole story is to force her to become a nice daughter who will believe that "adults are just as deserving of happiness as children are." (As if children and parents enjoy the same level of autonomy and power in a family, or in society.) I'm not arguing that adults need to entirely subsume themselves to their children, but come on -- in this story, the adults are jerking Abigail all over the place emotionally, while acting like 14-year-olds themselves, and she's the one who's presented as needing to "grow up"?! (Although, since her parents are clearly hopeless, I suppose she's the only person in her family with a chance at maturity.)
Then, the way this is achieved is by having Abigail "fall in love" with 18-year-old Judah, the eldest son of the Bow family (and a "man, not a boy" due to living a hundred years earlier). But Judah is promised to someone else, and Abigail's "love" never develops beyond an age-appropriate 14-year-old crush. Yet somehow, this is what makes her understand her parents, and why her father had to act on his crush. And that understanding of "love" makes everything okay, and turns Abigail into a wonderful person.
The ending-ending, where she meets Judah's descendant/reincarnation four years later and they instantly recognize their enduring love for one another, had me gagging and rolling my eyes to an extent that I'm lucky my face didn't freeze that way.
I probably would have liked this book as a child. But from my adult perspective, the story felt overly-contrived, and I really can't like a book with such a preachy and potentially seriously guilt-inducing message for children.
And frankly, I preferred "terrible" Abigail at the beginning of the story to "wonderful" Abigail at the end.
February 1, 2022
Really enjoyed reading this magical story of 14yo Abby Kirk travelling back in time from 1980 Sydney to 1873 after following furry haired Beatie Bow. The characters are fun as most of the teenagers and children are unsympathetic certainly making their actions more believable. Great descriptions of The Rocks, and the living conditions of the poor with the magical element, The Gift.
May 16, 2021
‘It’s Beatie Bow,’ shrieked Mudda in a voice of horror, ‘risen from the dead!’If you’re an Australian of a certain age it’s practically a given that this book was one of your early high school English class assigned readings. You probably spent so much time second guessing what the author meant, trawling through the text for themes and writing essay after essay about characters, plot and location that even the sight of this book may make your heart sink.
You may even even remember watching the 1986 movie in your classroom on one of those combined TV and VHS contraptions; your teacher would have rolled it into your room on a metal trolley. My takeaway from the movie was that the girl who played Beatie Bow was someone I knew from Home and Away (it’s an Australian thing).
I liked this book in spite of myself in high school, even though my English teacher did everything in their power to make me hate it, what with their dreaded essays and overanalysing almost every single aspect of it. When my library ordered a new copy of it I wondered whether it would stand the test of time. It turns out it both does and doesn’t.
‘But I didna mean to bring you here, I didna know it could be done, heaven’s truth.’The story, with Abigail accidentally following Beatie Bow back in time to 1873, is still quite interesting. As a kid I had no interest in history but I found the details of The Rocks in both Abigail’s present and Beatie’s fascinating in this reread. I was less interested in the prophecy that saw Abigail cast as the Stranger when I was a kid. Now I want to know more about how the Gift works. I’ve decided I don’t like Abigail or Beatie; I’m pretty sure I liked both of them when I was a kid. I was never a fan of the insta-love.
In my English class there was no discussion about the age gap between Abigail and Judah, no mention of Uncle Samuel’s mental health and no analysis of the sentences that made me cringe during this reread, those featuring racism, ableism and body shaming. Then there’s the fact that Abigail is . I have no memory of my English teacher mentioning that at all.
This reread has made me wonder what I’d think of other English class reads as an adult. I may need to revisit some more.
I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.
Blog - https://schizanthusnerd.com
May 26, 2016
Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park
and beautifully narrated by Kate Hood
I have been listening to this on audio just a chapter or two at a time and loved it!
The setting is in Sydney, Australia, in a well worn place known as The Rocks which is an historic area in the centre of Sydney City and close to the harbour.
Built/chiselled from local sandstone and hand made bricks by some of our earliest settlers, most of whom were convict labour, its cobbled streets remain an awe inspiring reminder of our unique heritage and is a perfectly magical setting which is very befitting this story.
Although the surrounding area has changed a bit since this book was written, The Rocks is well preserved as a heritage listed area and still looks very much as it always has.
This is an area I know well...having grown up in Sydney and having spent many good times wandering there as a child and adult, It is a beautiful place steeped in history...and haunted too! It is easy to envision this endearing time-travelling Beatie Bow story unfolding there.
When a harmless little scary game called playing Beatie Bow goes awry, little Abigail finds herself suddenly transported to another place and time...a place she is sure she doesn't recognize, yet is somehow familiar.
............ ............
*Listening to this I was very much reminded of another beautifully narrated story I listened to on audio which readers of this might also like: The Poppet and the Lune
by Madeline Claire Franklin
Audio version Narrated by Elizabeth Basalto.
September 11, 2020
Four stars for the way in which ‘Playing Beatie Bow’ engages with its historical past and makes the Sydney area of The Rocks entirely believable. The time travel premise gives the novel both edge and a slight surrealism, which is further strengthened by Park’s sure style and eye for detail.
Less than four stars for the ending though (no spoilers) - although I’ll readily acknowledge that successfully concluding a text like this poses a real challenge for both author and reader.
A lovely read, nevertheless, and a highly rewarding exploration of place and time in Australian social history.
Less than four stars for the ending though (no spoilers) - although I’ll readily acknowledge that successfully concluding a text like this poses a real challenge for both author and reader.
A lovely read, nevertheless, and a highly rewarding exploration of place and time in Australian social history.
April 19, 2011
I will forever remember the moment I first encountered this book. After a particularly mundane school day I plonked myself down in the backseat of our car and prepared for the drive home. However, instead of starting the engine my mother turned around and said, "I've got a small surprise for you. I was at a bookshop today and thought you might enjoy this." She then proceeded to hand me a copy of Playing Beatie Bow. Getting a book as a surprise gift truly made my day, I was almost giddy with anticipation to read it. I was nine years old, and although I liked it, I don't think I really understood it all.
Reading it as an adult I have a completely different appreciation of it.
I found it to be an easy, quick read. The events unfolded much faster given that my grown up brain was able to digest the themes of supernatural time travel, period English language, brothels and complicated emotional feelings much easier.
I still like Abigail and still found Beatie to be a little brat. The story moved at a quick pace and changed enough to keep you interested. I also appreciated the ending despite it's sappiness and that it 'tied everything up neatly'.
Upon re-reading I'm not sure I would give it to a 9 year old to read as it does peek into somewhat adult themes, but then again those themes flew right over my head back then and I loved the book.
Reading it as an adult I have a completely different appreciation of it.
I found it to be an easy, quick read. The events unfolded much faster given that my grown up brain was able to digest the themes of supernatural time travel, period English language, brothels and complicated emotional feelings much easier.
I still like Abigail and still found Beatie to be a little brat. The story moved at a quick pace and changed enough to keep you interested. I also appreciated the ending despite it's sappiness and that it 'tied everything up neatly'.
Upon re-reading I'm not sure I would give it to a 9 year old to read as it does peek into somewhat adult themes, but then again those themes flew right over my head back then and I loved the book.
August 5, 2010
I still love this book (it has been my fourth time now). Abigail is a kind of anti-heroine, but her personality is interestingly multi-faceted, Beatie and the rest of the Bow Family are so entertainingly vivid and Abigail's time-travel-experience is believably painted in loving detail (up to the accent of the Scottish immigrants and their Glasgow Marble patterned woolen stockings).
There is no denying that the ending is cotton candy pink; it successfully underlines the two - disputable - messages the author is trying to shout in our direction:
a) Real love on first sight exists
b) The ability to love deeply and truly is not connected to age or experience.
30 years old and recommended!
There is no denying that the ending is cotton candy pink; it successfully underlines the two - disputable - messages the author is trying to shout in our direction:
a) Real love on first sight exists
b) The ability to love deeply and truly is not connected to age or experience.
30 years old and recommended!
August 29, 2014
when I've had a couple of drinks and am trekking up the sandstone steps by the Argyle Cut to go to the Glenmore, I sing to myself "oh Mudda, oh Mudda, what's that, what's that; it's Beatie Bow, risen from the dead!" and chuckle. I loved this book when I was young, it's given me a whole new way to look at the city around me, and to think about history (aside from its romance and strong, appealing characters). I think about the stockings in Abigail's mother's shop, and how Abigail knows that the past is unknowable by the present, because she's been there and she's seen.
February 23, 2018
Delightful. Revisiting my childhood in the sweetest way.
February 8, 2025
Thanks to the members of my small Twitter book club I came to Ruth Park late in life, reading her Harp in the South trilogy first, then the first volume of her autobiography, and now this. I think I would have loved this book as a child, and enjoyed it as an adult. Clearly Ruth Park was a writer who loved, above all, to tell stories, and all her books seem to show her belief, I guess, that the suffering of those less economically fortunate, and joys, and endurance too, are worth illuminating. I look forward to reading all of her work.
May 20, 2016
I remember my trip to Sydney on an excursion, more than the book. This is a classic Aussie book, excellent for primary school students.
April 11, 2020
An absolutely magical story. I loved following Abby on her strange little journey into the past. I'm very glad I stumbled across this book.
August 6, 2013
Fourteen year old Abigail Kirk lives with her divorced mother in a high-rise apartment in one of Sydney's oldest suburbs, The Rocks, right below the giant Harbour Bridge and near the Opera House. Over the summer holidays, she helps at her mother's antiques shop and relieves her neighbour Justine of the burden of her two small children, Vincent ("the high-rise monster"), and four-year-old Natalie, prone to fevers and fears and forever being bullied by her unpleasant brother. Abigail takes them to a nearby park, and there she watches a group of children playing a game called Beatie Bow. Vincent joins in, but Natalie hangs back to watch, and draws Abigail's attention to a waifish, poorly dressed little girl with very short hair, standing nearby and avidly watching.
The children's game is rather spooky, though there isn't much to it: they form a circle but for two of them, one to stand in the middle as "Mudda" (mother) who answers her "children's" cries of "what's that noise?" when they hear moans and other creepy sounds, and the other to hide under a white sheet and creep towards them to give them a fright. The children scatter, the ghost of Beatie Bow catches one to take her or his place, and the game begins again.
When Abigail's mother Kathy tells her daughter that her ex-husband wants to get back together with them, to make the family whole again - and take them all to Norway with him - Abigail is furious. She never got over the feeling of betrayal when he left them - left her, is how she sees it - for another woman when she was ten. In a miff and angry with her mother for wanting her ex-husband back, she goes to the park and when she sees Natalie's "little furry girl", she tries to talk to her. The little girl flees, and startled, Abigail follows, up through the narrow old alleys and stairwells, and suddenly, at the stroke of the town clock, finds herself in a world both familiar and utterly alien.
It's 1873 in Sydney Town, a muddy colonial town, and the little girl's family takes Abigail in after she sprains her ankle running through the streets after the girl - who says her name is Beatie Bow. The family of Scottish immigrants consists of Granny Tallisker, who has "the Gift", and Mr Bow, an Englishman suffering from a head injury after fighting in the Crimean War who married Granny's daughter, now dead of typhoid fever that took her newborn baby and another child as well. Mr Bow runs a confectionary shop on the ground floor, making all the sweets with his extended family's help. As well as Beatie, Samuel Bow has a son, a teenager called Judah who works as a sailor, and a younger son, Gibbie, who hasn't yet recovered from the typhoid fever that took his mother and who relishes planning out his own funeral and being sickly. Also living with them is their cousin, Dorcas Tallisker, known as Dovey, who has a limp leg from a childhood accident that was never set properly.
Granny and Dovey think that Abigail is "the stranger", whose coming has an important purpose to do with the Gift living on in the family - Granny is the last one, and there aren't many family members left. They won't help Abigail return to her own time until she's fulfilled her purpose in being here, whatever that is - even though, as Abigail learns, it means that one of Granny's four grandchildren will remain childless, one will have the Gift, and one will die young.
Anyone who grew up in Australia in the 80s will be familiar with this story. It was first published in 1980 but had a second life when the movie adaptation came out in 1986. You can watch the entire film adaptation on YouTube, which I've been doing while I write this review, mostly because I wanted to see if it was really like my memories. See, I remember watching the movie at school, with my class - grade five I'd say, when I was ten? That would have been 1989 I think. Well I'm not sure exactly when we watched it in class, and I think there was more than one time, but I remembered it as being really rather scary. I couldn't remember much except the Beatie Bow game, the "little furry girl" who seemed very mysterious to me, and the modern-day older girl (in the movie she's seventeen) being almost lured into the past. I remember the palms touching - that's one of the strongest things to have stayed with me throughout my life; I remembered it as being the key to the time travel. Of course, this doesn't even happen in the book! Anyway, I always had a very lively imagination that lived on darker images, so this certainly made an impression on me, even though I didn't really understand it all.
Perhaps because the movie spooked me, I never read the book as a kid. It was one of those very popular novels and my school library certainly had a copy, but I never had any interest in reading it until a few years ago when I hunted down a copy via Amazon (you can still get it easily in Australia, but I don't think it was ever in print in Canada!). I'll add this about the adaptation: it's very 80s but very good, it sticks pretty closely to the book and I think one of the reasons why my teachers liked us to see it, aside from it being Australian, was because it provides a good glimpse into life in colonial Sydney - how people lived, what it looked like etc. (If you've got a spare 127 minutes, definitely click on the link and watch the movie.)
Abigail isn't a bad sort at the beginning of the story, but as the months go by in 1873 and she spends more time with the Tallisker-Bow family, she realises just how selfish she's always been, especially in regards to her mother and father.
As the movie did later, the book recreates colonial Sydney with fine detail, in all its grimy, rotten-teeth glory. It's rich with atmosphere, some excitement and danger, and is more of a family history than a story of colonial Australia. It's Abigail's coming-of-age story, a time for her to learn a great many things: patience, selflessness and generosity, love and loss, to appreciate what one has, and to make the most of things. She falls in love with Judah, and on learning that he's long been betrothed to Dovey, learns how to let go. She takes on this family's burden of heritage as a personal one, and stops whinging and lamenting her lot in order to help them.
These are some very well-written characters. They don't read like characters in a book but like real people, captured by the author but not conjured by her. The story is quite simple, not over-crowded with plot hurdles or too much drama. It plays out convincingly, and Abigail is a strong heroine able to carry the story and bind it all together. The other key character of strength is of course Beatie Bow herself, who is a good counter to Dovey's gentleness and kindness. The book doesn't suffer from the film's "starry-eyed gaze" (there's a bit of glossy posturing and soft lens action that's distinctly 80s), and at fourteen, Abigail acts appropriately for her age.
The ending is great, if a bit convenient: I had forgotten how it went, but it ties everything up so well and doesn't feel forced. This is a wonderful time travel adventure story, a great journey through old Sydney Town's established streets, rich in layers of detail and history. At its heart, it is a story about getting perspective: on family, and love, and life in general. Abigail travels a long way in order to realise what her own family means to her, and how she can help make her mother - and father - happy again, as well as herself. I enjoyed reading this a great deal, and I'm so glad I did read it, even after all these years - it's never too late to read a classic, right? And read again and again, and keep the book alive by reading it yet again. It's always sad to think of how many great books flared brightly but with a short wick, to sink away, out-of-print for ever more, so I'm always happy when a book manages to survive, and be remembered and read again. Let's keep these modern classics alive, shall we?
The children's game is rather spooky, though there isn't much to it: they form a circle but for two of them, one to stand in the middle as "Mudda" (mother) who answers her "children's" cries of "what's that noise?" when they hear moans and other creepy sounds, and the other to hide under a white sheet and creep towards them to give them a fright. The children scatter, the ghost of Beatie Bow catches one to take her or his place, and the game begins again.
When Abigail's mother Kathy tells her daughter that her ex-husband wants to get back together with them, to make the family whole again - and take them all to Norway with him - Abigail is furious. She never got over the feeling of betrayal when he left them - left her, is how she sees it - for another woman when she was ten. In a miff and angry with her mother for wanting her ex-husband back, she goes to the park and when she sees Natalie's "little furry girl", she tries to talk to her. The little girl flees, and startled, Abigail follows, up through the narrow old alleys and stairwells, and suddenly, at the stroke of the town clock, finds herself in a world both familiar and utterly alien.
It's 1873 in Sydney Town, a muddy colonial town, and the little girl's family takes Abigail in after she sprains her ankle running through the streets after the girl - who says her name is Beatie Bow. The family of Scottish immigrants consists of Granny Tallisker, who has "the Gift", and Mr Bow, an Englishman suffering from a head injury after fighting in the Crimean War who married Granny's daughter, now dead of typhoid fever that took her newborn baby and another child as well. Mr Bow runs a confectionary shop on the ground floor, making all the sweets with his extended family's help. As well as Beatie, Samuel Bow has a son, a teenager called Judah who works as a sailor, and a younger son, Gibbie, who hasn't yet recovered from the typhoid fever that took his mother and who relishes planning out his own funeral and being sickly. Also living with them is their cousin, Dorcas Tallisker, known as Dovey, who has a limp leg from a childhood accident that was never set properly.
Granny and Dovey think that Abigail is "the stranger", whose coming has an important purpose to do with the Gift living on in the family - Granny is the last one, and there aren't many family members left. They won't help Abigail return to her own time until she's fulfilled her purpose in being here, whatever that is - even though, as Abigail learns, it means that one of Granny's four grandchildren will remain childless, one will have the Gift, and one will die young.
Anyone who grew up in Australia in the 80s will be familiar with this story. It was first published in 1980 but had a second life when the movie adaptation came out in 1986. You can watch the entire film adaptation on YouTube, which I've been doing while I write this review, mostly because I wanted to see if it was really like my memories. See, I remember watching the movie at school, with my class - grade five I'd say, when I was ten? That would have been 1989 I think. Well I'm not sure exactly when we watched it in class, and I think there was more than one time, but I remembered it as being really rather scary. I couldn't remember much except the Beatie Bow game, the "little furry girl" who seemed very mysterious to me, and the modern-day older girl (in the movie she's seventeen) being almost lured into the past. I remember the palms touching - that's one of the strongest things to have stayed with me throughout my life; I remembered it as being the key to the time travel. Of course, this doesn't even happen in the book! Anyway, I always had a very lively imagination that lived on darker images, so this certainly made an impression on me, even though I didn't really understand it all.
Perhaps because the movie spooked me, I never read the book as a kid. It was one of those very popular novels and my school library certainly had a copy, but I never had any interest in reading it until a few years ago when I hunted down a copy via Amazon (you can still get it easily in Australia, but I don't think it was ever in print in Canada!). I'll add this about the adaptation: it's very 80s but very good, it sticks pretty closely to the book and I think one of the reasons why my teachers liked us to see it, aside from it being Australian, was because it provides a good glimpse into life in colonial Sydney - how people lived, what it looked like etc. (If you've got a spare 127 minutes, definitely click on the link and watch the movie.)
Abigail isn't a bad sort at the beginning of the story, but as the months go by in 1873 and she spends more time with the Tallisker-Bow family, she realises just how selfish she's always been, especially in regards to her mother and father.
'I'm not kind,' said Abigail with a sickish surprise. 'Look how I went on with Mum when she said she wanted us to get together with Dad again. Look what I did to Dad when I was little, punched him on the nose and made it bleed. Maybe I've never been really kind in my life.
And she remembered with a pang what Kathy had said, that awful day: that she had never, either as a child or a fourteen-year-old, offered a word of sympathy to her her mother.
'Yet here are these people, happy and grateful to be able to read and write, just to be allowed to earn a living; and they've shared everything they can share with me, whom they don't know from Adam.'
These Victorians lived in a dangerous world, where a whole family could be wiped out with typhoid fever or smallpox, where a soldier could get a hole in his head that you could put your fist in, where there were no pensions or free hospitals or penicillin or proper education for girls, or even boys, probably. Yet, in a way, it was a more human world than the one Abigail called her own. [pp.76-77]
As the movie did later, the book recreates colonial Sydney with fine detail, in all its grimy, rotten-teeth glory. It's rich with atmosphere, some excitement and danger, and is more of a family history than a story of colonial Australia. It's Abigail's coming-of-age story, a time for her to learn a great many things: patience, selflessness and generosity, love and loss, to appreciate what one has, and to make the most of things. She falls in love with Judah, and on learning that he's long been betrothed to Dovey, learns how to let go. She takes on this family's burden of heritage as a personal one, and stops whinging and lamenting her lot in order to help them.
These are some very well-written characters. They don't read like characters in a book but like real people, captured by the author but not conjured by her. The story is quite simple, not over-crowded with plot hurdles or too much drama. It plays out convincingly, and Abigail is a strong heroine able to carry the story and bind it all together. The other key character of strength is of course Beatie Bow herself, who is a good counter to Dovey's gentleness and kindness. The book doesn't suffer from the film's "starry-eyed gaze" (there's a bit of glossy posturing and soft lens action that's distinctly 80s), and at fourteen, Abigail acts appropriately for her age.
The ending is great, if a bit convenient: I had forgotten how it went, but it ties everything up so well and doesn't feel forced. This is a wonderful time travel adventure story, a great journey through old Sydney Town's established streets, rich in layers of detail and history. At its heart, it is a story about getting perspective: on family, and love, and life in general. Abigail travels a long way in order to realise what her own family means to her, and how she can help make her mother - and father - happy again, as well as herself. I enjoyed reading this a great deal, and I'm so glad I did read it, even after all these years - it's never too late to read a classic, right? And read again and again, and keep the book alive by reading it yet again. It's always sad to think of how many great books flared brightly but with a short wick, to sink away, out-of-print for ever more, so I'm always happy when a book manages to survive, and be remembered and read again. Let's keep these modern classics alive, shall we?
November 11, 2019
I came across this time-travelling Australian fantasy in the library recently, and just had to pick it up. It's been decades since I last read it, but it was one of those books I absolutely loved as a kid - I was almost worried about reading it again, wondering if the magic would be lost, but it wasn't. It was as entertaining as ever, and I was thoroughly amused by all those rotten kids. Which sounds terrible, but it's true: nearly all the kids in this book are monsters of selfishness. Selfish brats of children can be fantastic characters - my favourite book of all time, The Secret Garden, has as its heroine an enormously unpleasant little girl, and I am deeply attached to her. Both Beatie Bow and Abigail are not all that much better, and little Gilbert is the most obnoxious pest - when Abby finally loses her shit and clouts him about the ears you know it is entirely well-deserved. It's not that I find unpleasant children particularly likeable, you understand. They're not very. But they do feel realistic, and the kids in Playing Beatie Bow always feel absolutely real to me. I'm going to have to find a copy of this book for myself - I don't want to stumble randomly across it in another twenty years and realise I've forgotten all about it again. It's too entertaining for that...
September 8, 2016
I remember crying over this book at school. It's pretty dark for a novel aimed at young adults, but Ruth Park is so deft at weaving the strands of her story that it's very difficult to put down, even as an adult. Much of this story is a curious blend of history and fantasy, but the themes she explores through the eyes of her out of place lead character - family, fitting in, first love, first loss - are thoroughly modern.
January 4, 2020
Nice time-slip story, back to 1873 Sydney. The book wraps things up extremely well; very satisfying. There's a bit of psychological drama and some romance too. Knowledge of Australian history and geography not essential, though it probably helps.
I could wish for a better cover illustration.
I could wish for a better cover illustration.
Read
November 21, 2017This was a re-read to assist with a novel I'm currently writing.
Very believable situation on time travel back to the past and life in those days.
Very believable situation on time travel back to the past and life in those days.
January 26, 2019
The funny thing about this one was that I loved it when I read it as a child, but re-reading it is an adult I found that it had lost a bit of its “magic”. It is however still one of those classic novels that needs to be read.
November 28, 2018
Over 30 years ago, Playing Beatie Bow fell into my hands (probably through my school or local library), and I was enthralled. Last weekend, I picked it up again and my heart still pounded at the same points and I had to blink away tears before my family spied me crying over this gorgeous little book.
Playing Beatie Bow was first published in 1980 and I remember being of similar age to Abigail, the fourteen-year old protagonist when I first read the story. The story is set in Sydney in the 1980s. Abigail’s family has broken down with the separation of her parents. I remember all too well the stigma and shame from having divorced parents at that age during the 1980s. Abigail is lost, heartbroken and just a little harder. She follows a strange young girl up into The Rocks (a historic area close to Sydney Harbour) and slips back a century to 1873. She finds herself recognised as The Stranger who has been prophesied to save The Gift for the Talisker and Bow families.
Park deftly weaves the past with the present and gives readers a wonderful glimpse into The Rocks of the 1870s. I adored the storyline and subplots, and even after all this time, I still found myself connecting with Abigail who was at times immature, selfish and annoying (exactly how fourteen-year olds can often be).
I admit this book has aged along with the depiction of 1980s family life, but for me it was a true and real representation of what life was like and although, I didn’t experience time travel (not for want of trying), I did experience family breakdown and it did scar me as it did Abigail.
I enjoyed the vividness of Park’s Sydney and adored the romantic thread throughout the story. Park’s themes of relationship, friendship and family are just as relevant today as they were back in the 1980s.
I found Playing Beatie Bow to be a deliciously wonderful and warm read, and I sincerely hope YA readers will enjoy this foray into the past (the 1980s and 1870s!).
A note about Playing Beatie Bow (Penguin Books):
It was awarded a number of prestigious literary awards including the 1981 CBCA Book of the Year Award. In 1986, the book was turned into a feature film and I think it’s about time I search for a copy of the video.
Playing Beatie Bow was first published in 1980 and I remember being of similar age to Abigail, the fourteen-year old protagonist when I first read the story. The story is set in Sydney in the 1980s. Abigail’s family has broken down with the separation of her parents. I remember all too well the stigma and shame from having divorced parents at that age during the 1980s. Abigail is lost, heartbroken and just a little harder. She follows a strange young girl up into The Rocks (a historic area close to Sydney Harbour) and slips back a century to 1873. She finds herself recognised as The Stranger who has been prophesied to save The Gift for the Talisker and Bow families.
Park deftly weaves the past with the present and gives readers a wonderful glimpse into The Rocks of the 1870s. I adored the storyline and subplots, and even after all this time, I still found myself connecting with Abigail who was at times immature, selfish and annoying (exactly how fourteen-year olds can often be).
I admit this book has aged along with the depiction of 1980s family life, but for me it was a true and real representation of what life was like and although, I didn’t experience time travel (not for want of trying), I did experience family breakdown and it did scar me as it did Abigail.
I enjoyed the vividness of Park’s Sydney and adored the romantic thread throughout the story. Park’s themes of relationship, friendship and family are just as relevant today as they were back in the 1980s.
I found Playing Beatie Bow to be a deliciously wonderful and warm read, and I sincerely hope YA readers will enjoy this foray into the past (the 1980s and 1870s!).
A note about Playing Beatie Bow (Penguin Books):
It was awarded a number of prestigious literary awards including the 1981 CBCA Book of the Year Award. In 1986, the book was turned into a feature film and I think it’s about time I search for a copy of the video.
November 11, 2020
My teenage review (from a long time ago): 5 Stars
My present day adult review on re-read: 3 Stars
Let's average the two: 4 Stars
I remember reading this in Year 9 while I was living in Sydney. It (and my English teacher of that year) had such a positive impact on my love of reading. I loved this book and I loved writing an analysis on this book with all the teenage angst built in.
The book starts out in Sydney in the 1980s with Abigail. Through a series of events, Abigail finds herself back in time 100 years earlier (still in Sydney) where she plays an important role in the future of the Bow family.
When I saw this in a second hand book shop I immediately grabbed it to rekindle that earlier time and I almost wish I hadn't. While I remember loving the book, it has just lost its magic throughout the years (or maybe I have lost that magic throughout the years). Some things should just be left alone and I wish I had left this just as a beautiful memory. A lesson learned. Still a really beautiful, iconic Australian book though.
Reading Challenge
Aussie Reader's 2020 Spring Challenge: Read a book where the author's initial appear in the word "Spring Break" (RP)
Aussie Reader's 2020 November Challenge: Read a book where the author's initials appear in 2014 Melbourne Cup horse Protectionist (PR)
My present day adult review on re-read: 3 Stars
Let's average the two: 4 Stars
I remember reading this in Year 9 while I was living in Sydney. It (and my English teacher of that year) had such a positive impact on my love of reading. I loved this book and I loved writing an analysis on this book with all the teenage angst built in.
The book starts out in Sydney in the 1980s with Abigail. Through a series of events, Abigail finds herself back in time 100 years earlier (still in Sydney) where she plays an important role in the future of the Bow family.
When I saw this in a second hand book shop I immediately grabbed it to rekindle that earlier time and I almost wish I hadn't. While I remember loving the book, it has just lost its magic throughout the years (or maybe I have lost that magic throughout the years). Some things should just be left alone and I wish I had left this just as a beautiful memory. A lesson learned. Still a really beautiful, iconic Australian book though.
Reading Challenge
Aussie Reader's 2020 Spring Challenge: Read a book where the author's initial appear in the word "Spring Break" (RP)
Aussie Reader's 2020 November Challenge: Read a book where the author's initials appear in 2014 Melbourne Cup horse Protectionist (PR)
April 15, 2021
I remember in the 80s my elder sister reading this book over and over.
Although I may have watched the adaptation, I'm not sure I ever read the book (or possibly just didn't understand it due to my age back then).
40 years on and this is still a wonderful coming of age story with a dash of time travel thrown in. Great YA read.
Although I may have watched the adaptation, I'm not sure I ever read the book (or possibly just didn't understand it due to my age back then).
40 years on and this is still a wonderful coming of age story with a dash of time travel thrown in. Great YA read.
April 20, 2017
Fabulous evocative historical novel that also has a great message. Listened on audio. This was in the Junior section at my library. Should be YA
October 11, 2024
What a boring book with little pay-off and a terrible ending message told through supposed "character growth".
November 26, 2018
It looks like I’ve got a really good start, this year, in catching up with the Aussie lits. This is another classic which pretty much everybody has read but me! Seriously, looking at the cover, I thought it’d be something creepy (a quote at the back of the book reads, “It’s Beatie Bow – risen from the dead!”) but it’s not at all creepy! It’s a time travel tale which I adore and I love this book!
Abigail Kirk is not perfect. She was hurt deeply years ago and has never let go. She felt that she should and she wanted to but she doesn’t know how. It took a trip in time for her to learn about love and what it means to love. The ending, whilst pretty predictable, also carried a twist which I didn’t expect.
The story is set in Sydney’s Rocks area and I had in my head through the book the images of cobblestones paths, sandstone buildings, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge… One of the loveliest places around! This is one of the factor of my loving this book because I can see it clearly in my head as I know the place well
Abigail Kirk is not perfect. She was hurt deeply years ago and has never let go. She felt that she should and she wanted to but she doesn’t know how. It took a trip in time for her to learn about love and what it means to love. The ending, whilst pretty predictable, also carried a twist which I didn’t expect.
The story is set in Sydney’s Rocks area and I had in my head through the book the images of cobblestones paths, sandstone buildings, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge… One of the loveliest places around! This is one of the factor of my loving this book because I can see it clearly in my head as I know the place well
July 21, 2009
Though the language of this book was quite confusing in many parts I learnt to uderstand the way people lived in the 19th century. Though there were many dangers, people treated friends and family alot better thatn we do today. I believe that the book was better than the movie because there was more information and it was better to understand it.
January 9, 2013
Unforgettable title! I loved reading something that was not just Australian, and not just a historical novel, but both at once to create a world as mysterious and different from my own as possible. I got very attached to the latter-day family.
July 15, 2009
I won this book in year 8 primary school and it was a real treat. I love the imagery and this was my first experience of reading about a past time period.
February 24, 2014
Abby Kirk, flat-chested lonely unsociable 14, "raged and sulked" p 23 when mother Jan 36 wants to rejoin unfaithful husband in Norway "love is a thing you have to experience before you know how powerful it can be" p 19. Abby "dumbstruck" p 163 repeats mother's advice. If theme is 'power of love' (cue music "and now the violins" p 26), vanquishes time, why is title about career-driven spinster?
Emphasis on working-class lifestyle history, geography, child grows up, same as https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7.... Pretty turns of phrase. May appeal to teen wanting to grow up.
1*? Despite talented pleasing style and holiday in past, unasked-for lessons provoke anger, feeling of being cheated. Love is puzzling emotion, but doubtfully hormone dose that transforms child to adult without physical intrusion, just pulse thudding (yet more convincing than Queen's intervention for pharaoh's tomb goblet). Uneasy sense of checklist for awards judges / curriculum educators. Subject of niche-group audience age 'loves', grows up (finds 'real' love when 'old' 19?). Lessons: geography - streets, landmarks; history - diet, costumes, occupations (jobs, pastimes), politics, economy, customs, immigrants. Senses: sewage stink, street clamor, colors and feel of upper-class vs working-class dress (bright silks, soft furs, vs drab, scratchy homespun).
Author clever to note only high-class fancy colorful outfits survive, confusing modern collector. Victorian way of life seems authentic, break from typical aristocratic romance. Along lines of born in poverty author Catherine Cookson who lived lives she wrote https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Neighbor Natalie Bow 4, persecuted by brother Vincent 6 dubs watcher fascinated with playground game "furry girl" for hair very short, like fur on animal. Children chant observer's name in rhyme, fearful when another under sheet advances menacingly. Beatie 11 speeds away when Abby chases "to talk" into alley .. and smelly streets of horses and beggars. Running after and frightening smaller child 'to talk' makes no sense.
Beatrice Bow's family unselfishly shelters, feeds, clothes and nurses penniless useless injured 'Stranger'. Gran from Scottish Orkney Isles has foretold - one die, one barren, and Stranger save family Gift of Prophecy, seeing, and traveling, future. After wrong houses, odd dialect, long dresses, gas lamps, wood fires, Queen Victoria portraits, many hints, Abby finally asks the year - 1873 p 45. Why does she take so long to clue in?
She is an angry, mean, selfish, prideful, pampered, thoughtless, brainless brat, nasty for all four years since landmark skyscraper architect "fell in love with" p 19 much younger secretary Jan, and left marriage of 12 years p 19. Kid pouts oh-so sorry for herself. Chamber pot - Dovey who limps from childhood injury carries, empties and cleans dish; odor from clothes and bodies - little fresh water, hard to wash; scratchy clothing layers - others' best or bought special. Author picks on younger brothers yet has them grow up good; invalid Gibby whines for attention - after his fever, all believe he is one predicted to die by Gran.
First she has to rush back. Why, we know time-travelers return a second after they left. Then she won't go back because she's bruised and ankle sprained. She posits impossible to explain absence yet injury and rescue by strangers would be enough.
Why does everyone believe time link is not Bow (Beatie/Natalie) powers, but crocheted flower, not yet made in past but tacked on Abby's homemade dress in future? Why does Abby suddenly feel ashamed for searching and leave dress in Dovey's locked hope chest, not seek key? After four weeks, why does Abby start helping out, making candy, except to keep author research? Stays for 'love', only leaves when prophecy 'fulfilled'.
Of course Abby falls for boy everyone does. Friendly, caring to all, cheery strong kind adorable sailor Judah 18 carries her in his arms first day. And is already engaged to Dovey. Gem of wisdom when he questions fancy steam and oil powered ships - when all that wind is free. Why should Abby know the day she will leave, (climax) when the shop catches fire with Gibby and Dovey trapped inside?
Emphasis on working-class lifestyle history, geography, child grows up, same as https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7.... Pretty turns of phrase. May appeal to teen wanting to grow up.
1*? Despite talented pleasing style and holiday in past, unasked-for lessons provoke anger, feeling of being cheated. Love is puzzling emotion, but doubtfully hormone dose that transforms child to adult without physical intrusion, just pulse thudding (yet more convincing than Queen's intervention for pharaoh's tomb goblet). Uneasy sense of checklist for awards judges / curriculum educators. Subject of niche-group audience age 'loves', grows up (finds 'real' love when 'old' 19?). Lessons: geography - streets, landmarks; history - diet, costumes, occupations (jobs, pastimes), politics, economy, customs, immigrants. Senses: sewage stink, street clamor, colors and feel of upper-class vs working-class dress (bright silks, soft furs, vs drab, scratchy homespun).
Author clever to note only high-class fancy colorful outfits survive, confusing modern collector. Victorian way of life seems authentic, break from typical aristocratic romance. Along lines of born in poverty author Catherine Cookson who lived lives she wrote https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Neighbor Natalie Bow 4, persecuted by brother Vincent 6 dubs watcher fascinated with playground game "furry girl" for hair very short, like fur on animal. Children chant observer's name in rhyme, fearful when another under sheet advances menacingly. Beatie 11 speeds away when Abby chases "to talk" into alley .. and smelly streets of horses and beggars. Running after and frightening smaller child 'to talk' makes no sense.
Beatrice Bow's family unselfishly shelters, feeds, clothes and nurses penniless useless injured 'Stranger'. Gran from Scottish Orkney Isles has foretold - one die, one barren, and Stranger save family Gift of Prophecy, seeing, and traveling, future. After wrong houses, odd dialect, long dresses, gas lamps, wood fires, Queen Victoria portraits, many hints, Abby finally asks the year - 1873 p 45. Why does she take so long to clue in?
She is an angry, mean, selfish, prideful, pampered, thoughtless, brainless brat, nasty for all four years since landmark skyscraper architect "fell in love with" p 19 much younger secretary Jan, and left marriage of 12 years p 19. Kid pouts oh-so sorry for herself. Chamber pot - Dovey who limps from childhood injury carries, empties and cleans dish; odor from clothes and bodies - little fresh water, hard to wash; scratchy clothing layers - others' best or bought special. Author picks on younger brothers yet has them grow up good; invalid Gibby whines for attention - after his fever, all believe he is one predicted to die by Gran.
First she has to rush back. Why, we know time-travelers return a second after they left. Then she won't go back because she's bruised and ankle sprained. She posits impossible to explain absence yet injury and rescue by strangers would be enough.
Why does everyone believe time link is not Bow (Beatie/Natalie) powers, but crocheted flower, not yet made in past but tacked on Abby's homemade dress in future? Why does Abby suddenly feel ashamed for searching and leave dress in Dovey's locked hope chest, not seek key? After four weeks, why does Abby start helping out, making candy, except to keep author research? Stays for 'love', only leaves when prophecy 'fulfilled'.
Of course Abby falls for boy everyone does. Friendly, caring to all, cheery strong kind adorable sailor Judah 18 carries her in his arms first day. And is already engaged to Dovey. Gem of wisdom when he questions fancy steam and oil powered ships - when all that wind is free. Why should Abby know the day she will leave, (climax) when the shop catches fire with Gibby and Dovey trapped inside?
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