Wearing Paper Dresses in Aussie Readers

Oct 10, 2019 Brenda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, 2019-release, aussie-authors, sent-by-publisher, debut, reviewing-by-request, arc, own-read, historical-fiction

Bill and Elise and their two daughters, Ruby and Marjorie lived happily in Melbourne in the 1950s – until Bill’s mother passed away and left his father on his own on the farm in the Mallee. He tried, Pa did, but finally he called Bill to return to the farm to help out. The family made the long journey and while the two girls and Bill settled in reasonably well, Elise struggled. She had no idea of the food to feed the shearers when they arrived; she had no idea what food to take when asked to “ta ...more

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Feb 10, 2021 Kim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: act-library, 2019-release-aussie-author, audio-books, borrowbox-act-library, aussie-readers

So atmospheric, The Mallee is a character in itself. Sandy and arid, home to the stubborn Mallee gum tree where rain is magical and mystical.
Many a person has gone mad in The Mallee and this is a tale of womanly madness in the 1950s and the effects on her family.
I had been putting off reading this, writing it off a little as light chick-lit. The title lead me to think that, but it's far more than that. The characters came alive while I was listening to this.
I was also reminded of my own Little ...more

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Oct 27, 2019 Bree T rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, australian, historical-fiction, mental-illness, aww2019

This is a bit of a tough one, in terms of trying to articulate how I felt about it. I love the cover – it’s incredibly detailed and eye catching. I’ve never read any Rosalie Ham, so the comparisons weren’t a draw for me. I liked the sound of reading about the Mallee and the tough farming community that populated it. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be an easy sort of read but it ended up being quite a bit more difficult than I anticipated.

It begins with the story of Bill and his wife Elise. This is a bit of a tough one, in terms of trying to articulate how I felt about it. I love the cover – it’s incredibly detailed and eye catching. I’ve never read any Rosalie Ham, so the comparisons weren’t a draw for me. I liked the sound of reading about the Mallee and the tough farming community that populated it. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be an easy sort of read but it ended up being quite a bit more difficult than I anticipated.

It begins with the story of Bill and his wife Elise. Bill had left his family farm deep in the Mallee in northern Victoria to work in Melbourne and send money back to his parents, struggling to keep the farm afloat. Elise is a city girl and they meet, marry and welcome their two girls living in the city as well. But then Bill’s mother dies and Bill’s father, the taciturn ‘Pa’, summons him back to the family farm to help out. There’s no one else after all – Bill’s two sisters are married to farmers with their own properties, and anyway they’re women. Everyone knows that farming is man’s work. So Bill takes his wife and two daughters up to the Mallee where Elise struggles to be accepted by the local women, who are deeply suspicious of her different ways. She doesn’t know how to cook the hearty meals and snacks the shearers want, she doesn’t know the right sort of food when asked to ‘bring a plate’. The women are confused by her gloves, make up and dressy appearance. Her French meringues are met with disdain and disbelief. Elise spirals downwards into a depression, the harsh landscape of the Mallee sucking the life out of her. For Rose and Marjorie, Bill and Elise’s two daughters, Elise’s fragile nerves become something to not only navigate with delicacy at home but also something that local kids use as bullying tools.

On one hand, this is a very in depth look at what I think it must’ve been like to have a mental illness at a time when it was not particularly well understood and also in a location where isolation and ostracisation were rampant. Elise is deeply snubbed by local women, one even going out of her way to constantly berate and belittle her, telling her bluntly to her face that she doesn’t fit in or belong here. Elise is like the flowers she so desperately wants to grow, suffocating and dying in the scorching and unforgiving landscape. And Bill, her husband is so infuriating it hurts. Especially late in the book, when a terrible tragedy strikes that he immediately lays blame for. So much of Elise’s illness management falls on her two young daughters, who are pre-teens and teens during the bad times, as Elise worsens. A lot of the book is from Marjorie’s point of view and she doesn’t have the gentle knack of placating Elise and letting things slide by. Marjorie is more combative and she often finds herself on the receiving end of Elise’s mood swings, which bring scorn and criticism. This makes Marjorie even more belligerent and it turns into a cycle.

The pressure placed upon Rose and Marjorie (and Marjorie alone after Rose leaves for teachers college) is immense. They are two young girls and then teenagers, who don’t really know what they’re dealing with. Or why it’s happening. They have little in the way of support, given the way the locals treat Elise and the fact that the two men in their lives mostly seem to feel as though this is “women’s business” of fragile nerves and eventually Elise will be fine. I didn’t really like the character of Pa for a lot of the book – he’s a typical sexist traditionalist. But he actually kind of grew on me throughout the story and it seemed as though in the end, he was doing better at trying to understand and help Elise than her own husband was. Pa cares for his two granddaughters in the best way that he can when Elise is unable to, making Marjorie breakfast (even though he’s typically useless), keeping her out of the hot sun when she’d have waited there all day for Elise when she was in one of her manic phases, just generally trying to make sure life kept going even though it wasn’t his forte. Bill however, gave me the irrits especially at the end. His cruel, thoughtless words had such severe consequences and it didn’t even seem like he recognised this, or was sorry for it. Especially because it wasn’t true and what happened was a product of his own negligence and ignorance. He may not have known what to do, and he wouldn’t have been alone. But dumping this on his own children, saying it was their ‘job’ to look after their mother, was about the worst thing he could’ve done in terms of helping basically anyone in this equation.

For the first part of the book, I was mostly ambivalent about it but I ended up with a lot of anger and sadness towards Marjorie and Rose towards the end. I also really felt that the wider community were portrayed like mostly a bunch of jerks and then decided to be nice at the end and everyone felt they should be thanked for basically acting like actual decent human beings. If someone had literally ostracised and cruelly baited a family member of mine, one where it was quite obvious they were in a struggling situation as well and then decided like 10+ years later they might do one nice thing for them because they feel differently now, my overwhelming response wouldn’t be one of gratitude….

***A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of an honest review*** ...more

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