Restless Dolly Maunder (2023)

Why this one?

I’ve been reading selected entries from the 2024 Women’s Prize Longlist. Having loved Grenville’s previous Women’s Prize winner, but read nothing more by her, I had to give this one a go. Just as I was finishing up on this, it was announced that it had made the final six on the 2024 Shortlist.

Catherine (Kate) Elizabeth Grenville (1950- ; active 1983- ) was born in Sydney, Australia. She was one of three children born to a district court judge and a pharmacist. She studied at the University of Sydney before spending the late 70s working mostly in film-editing in Sydney and later London and Paris. In 1980 she took an MA in creative writing at the University of Colorado, before returning to Australia.

She published an acclaimed short story collection, Bearded Ladies, in 1984, followed swiftly by her first novel Lilian's Story (1985) which won The Australian / Vogel Literary Award and became something of a phenomenon, spawning a 1994 sequel (Dark Places) and a 1996 movie. The Idea of Perfection, her fifth novel, won the 2001 Women’s Prize, and was her last before an acclaimed sequence of historical novels examining the early years of colonial white settlement in Australia, beginning with the Booker-nominated (and Commonwealth Prize-winning) The Secret River in 2006. The latter novel has been adapted for both stage and TV. Prior to writing more obliquely about her grandmother in Restless Dolly Maunder, she published a biography of her mother (fictionalised as ‘Nance’ in Dolly Maunder), One Life: A Mother’s Story (2015), which I imagine would make a good companion read to this one! In 2018 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Thoughts, etc.

Restless Dolly Maunder is the fictionalised story of Grenville’s grandmother, with the author trying to make sense of her mother’s distant and cold impression of the former by imagining the motivations and emotions that drove her ‘restless’ life. It begins with Dolly’s childhood, on a farm in New South Wales in the late nineteenth century. Dolly is a bright and promising pupil at the local one-room school, but grows up in an era when it’s practically unheard of for women to progress in education and take on a job of their own. Her ambition to become a teacher is futile, as teachers must relinquish their role upon marriage, an inevitability for a young woman of her time. Besides, her father couldn’t bear the shame of having a working daughter! ‘Over my dead body’ is his response to her request, and a phrase that haunts Dolly for the rest of her life.

A little later, she meets and falls for Jim, a charming young man who has the unfortunate disadvantage of being Catholic at the wrong time in history, and thus another one of her desires is thwarted at an early age. She settles instead for an old school acquaintance, the seemingly stable but caddish Bert Russell, who she marries and buys a farm with. Soon after, she learns that Bert has had an illegitimate child with another girl from their local area, and everybody in her family but her knew and kept it from her. There’s little she can do about it, and is trapped in a loveless marriage for the rest of her days. Her farm days see her get small revenge in the shape of a fleeting affair with the aforementioned Jim, and she has her own children with Bert.

Ultimately, while she is resigned to life as Bert’s wife (in spite of a series of further affairs) she finds her drive and energy in the world of business. Following a disastrous crop failure on the farm, they buy a small shop, and that’s the start of a series of business ventures which take Dolly and Bert to the dizzy heights of owning one of the finest hotels in Sydney, before the 1929 Depression arrives and their trajectory is sent into a downward spiral. Through the rest of the book, we see that Dolly never loses her relentlessness and drive to make more of her life, but slowly begins to realise that this constant focus on growth and betterment has, at times, led her to make poor decisions for her three children.

It’s a pacey book that, like its subject, never stays in the same place for too long. It’s page turning and dramatic, but occasionally seems to be moving so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. It rarely pauses for reflection, and is quite single-minded in its focus. Again, very much like Dolly! All of this is very clearly deliberate on the part of Grenville, though. We hurtle along with the book and its subject, carried along the waves of history, traversing its highs and lows. Dolly’s determination is the dominant force of the book, with her focus squarely on making something of herself in a time where every possible barrier was thrown in the way of women who wanted to do that.

The word ‘restless’ in the title is repeated incessantly throughout the book, and clearly a word Grenville means us to ponder. It feels like one of those words that can be used as a criticism, particularly of women, from those (men) who would prefer them to be restful, passive, compliant and out of the way of their domain of competition and activity. Dolly. conversely, must be restless if she is to succeed (or at times, even survive) - even if it means making the wrong decisions for her children (notably, Bert is not remotely implicated in any of those decisions - more work for women, this time expected…)

It’s a book which carries you along, barely pausing to admire the view (of history and the Australian landscape - both depicted briefly but with impact) before it crashes you down to earth with the emotional punch of its final section, in which an old Dolly meets a young Kate and asks a heartbreaking question. At this point we, like Dolly, can finally stop and reflect on an impressive life of activity and achievement, but also one in which one thing - love - was tragically absent. In all that Dolly represents in her necessary struggle to break down barriers and give her own (and her children’s) lives meaning, sacrifices have had to be made, some of them quietly tragic.

Score

8.5

A very worthy inclusion on the shortlist. I wasn’t as charmed by it as by the wonderful Idea of Perfection but it has left and impression and its themes are important ones to reflect on.

Next up

With the shortlist announced, I’ll be reading the two that I haven’t read from that (as soon as they arrive in the post!)