Mini Reviews

Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico

This was a quick weekend read in cold weather to indulge myself when I handed up all my assignments and started mid-semester break. My review of Coronation interested a few friends, so I was happy to start another Gallico book. 

I have empathy for Mrs Ada Harris, who should surely pronounce her own name 'Ida' since she says such things as, 'I syved some money to get me passport photo tyken.' Mrs Harris is a 'British char' and I've been an Aussie cleaning lady. She regards her profession as a creative effort in which she takes pride, which is possibly the best way to take domestic cleaning over the long term. (I only did it for a few years. You do get used to it, but it's notorious for repetitive strain injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome and lower back trouble.)

Anyway, Mrs Harris spots two Christian Dior dresses in the wardrobe of a client and considers them breathtaking and heavenly. They totally slake her thirst for beauty and colour, so she sets a new lifetime goal on the spot. It isn't to stop putting her body under strain cleaning for other people, for Mrs Harris is a realist. It's to own a Dior dress of her own, for she's also a romanticist. Mrs Harris knows there will never be an event to which she can wear it, but the thrilling idea of storing such exquisite perfection in her own wardrobe drives her to scrimp and save until she can afford this sublime but essentially useless item. 

Next she heads across to Paris to choose her dress, where she's totally out of her depth in powerful circles of elegance. Yet this plucky heroine refuses to feel belittled by snobbery and spurs herself on with the reminder, 'Your money is as good an anyone else's.' Her arrival impacts several other people she brushes shoulders with, including Madame Colbert, the manager, who realises that her job with VIPs has blinded her to the reality of wider human needs. There is also Natasha, the most celebrated model and toast of Paris, who knows full well that she's being objectified and treated as a pretty prop to boost other people's public images. Natasha longs to quit her illustrious job and be absorbed back into bourgeois anonymity, but considers the price too high to pay, until honest little Mrs Harris walks through the door.

It's a lovely story all about the high price of being 'somebody' and the inherent dignity of being a 'nobody' and also encourages us to discover our own piece of beauty to boost our spirits in this world of toil. I find reading Paul Gallico's books is a bit like indulging in a super-sweet dessert though. Reading them back to back would be overpowering, but they're great for a quick indulgence here and there. 

And talk about the 1950s vibe! This decade was over long before I was born, yet I can almost smell the Brylcreem, not to mention the heady scent of big money. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟 

Devotion by Hannah Kent

I adored this book because the characters' story is taken straight from my ancestral background on my mother's side. They are devout German and Prussian Lutherans who make the huge sacrifice of migrating to South Australia on a grueling six-month journey by sea, for the freedom of worshiping God in their own way. And they end up in the lush and fertile Adelaide Hills where they build the township of Hahndorf (which is re-named Heiligendorf in this novel, but we all know where it stands for). 

The tale starts back in the Prussian village of Kay, and focuses on two teenage girls who form an extremely close and loving bond. Hanne Nussbaum, who narrates the story, is a gauche and awkward girl who suspects she'll never live up to the expectations of her austere father and tight-lipped, stoic (but ravishingly beautiful) mother. Her new friend, Thea Auchenwald, is the daughter of a pair of broader-minded newcomers who linger on the outer circle of village life. Indeed, Thea's mother, Anna-Maria, is rumoured to be a bit witchy because of her herbal remedies, although desperate people don't mind calling on her for medical emergencies. 

During the debilitating sea passage on board the Kristi, something drastic happens to Hanne that allows her true sprightly and whimsical nature to have free rein. (Major plot spoilers seal my lips.) Suffice to say it changes her whole way of relating to her parents, her good-looking and cheeky twin brother, Matthias, and her fractious baby sister, Hermine. Not to mention Thea, who she comes to realise she loves with all her heart.

Hannah Kent is renowned for her impeccable research, and this is authentic and polished. Perhaps Hanne and Matthias may come across with the mindsets of twenty-first century youths, the way they surreptitiously smirk at their father's radical piety behind his back. If so, I feel Kent couldn't write it any other way. I love those flashes of modern solidarity from the twins. If they shared their father's same soberness and severity, as may well have been the case in real life, it wouldn't be the same book at all. I think historical novels must have their share of up-to-date attitudes to make them palatable.   

There is plenty of wonderful lyrical tribute to their new environment, full as it is with strange, mobile and noisy new flora and fauna. Hanne also contrasts the colour, light and perfume favorably against the dense, dark, forest environment they came from, lovely as it was. Since their story and the setting is my very own (for I lived a five minute drive from Hahndorf for many years) I wonder if I'm biased to appreciate this book as much as I do. It certainly makes me cherish my local environment and spare a thought for the brave and desperate settlers whose blood runs through my veins. 

I can't even give genre heads-ups for other readers, since that in itself may be spoilerish. All I can say is read it, and tell me what you think. It's historical fiction, and that's all we need to know at the start. 

The theme of the novel may be said to be spoken by Thea. 'Owe no-one anything, only love one another, for she who loveth hath fulfilled the covenant.' 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟