The Secret World of Connie Starr
As Connie Starr is born screaming her head off in Ballarat in 1934, her mother, Flora, knows that there will be “more chaos in the world than before,” and Connie will be at the heart of it.
Connie is both capricious and ethereal, yet she can also be sneaky, mischievous, and embarrassingly frank as she observes her family and their friends from her perch in a lemon tree where she communes with angels and demons.
Her father is Joseph, a Baptist minister who struggles to contain Connie and her siblings, Thom, Lydia, and Danny, as they try to forge their own paths in life. The ups and downs of other families—the Mabbetts, the Mitchells and the Finchleys—criss-cross with the Starrs, creating an enthralling patchwork of human drama set against a background of war and its after-effects.
Each character’s story is beautifully delineated, whether it is Thom’s misplaced determination to be different, Lydia’s starstruck romance with an American serviceman, or Flora’s sense of “the unfilled places in people’s souls” as she supports Birdie Mabbett through grief and her trials with a philandering husband. When Connie herself falls prey to one of her demons, everyone binds together to protect her.
The research on everything from wartime rationing to polio treatment to religion and politics wears the lightest of touches, yet the historical evocation of time and place is one of the best I’ve read in a long time. Plus, the morality and societal attitudes are honest and faithful to 1940s/1950s Australia, which makes it even more believable. Connie’s secret world is definitely memorable and worthy of your time. (If this novel receives the success it deserves, Ballarat might need to prepare for an influx of fans keen to visit the real locations.)
