My Father’s Moon, Cabin Fever, The Georges’ Wife: The Vera Wright Trilogy
Much-beloved in Australia, Elizabeth Jolley is finally getting some well-deserved notice in the United States. Though My Father’s Moon and Cabin Fever were both previously available, this is the first appearance of The Georges’ Wife in the U.S., and it is a vital part of the trilogy. The three books are semi-autobiographical, taking the protagonist Vera Wright from her work as a nurse in World War II England to life as a single mother in the 1950s to immigration to Australia more than a decade later.
The multiple settings provide a plethora of historical backdrops, all of which ring true: we hear both the trains full of wounded soldiers arriving at the hospital, and the muffled sound of a hidden, towel-wrapped illicit phonograph album playing in the nurses’ quarters. Bohemian London surfaces, post-war, with bright colors, sunshine, plentiful food and sexual entanglement. Australia as setting takes a backseat to the memories of an older Vera: we learn of the Australian neighborhood she paces, pushing the wheelchair of her aging, dementia-suffering beloved, but not much outside of that.
Readers may be put off at first by Jolley’s fragmented writing style; the narrative hops and skips, then turns back and repeats, with some variations, events that have already been described. This style, however, very much fits the workings of Vera’s mind. She’s an unreliable narrator at the best of times, and we have the pleasure of experiencing her efforts to grasp at the true narrative of her life through the slippery fingers of memory.
