Title: Allegra in Three Parts
Author: Suzanne Daniel
Author: Suzanne Daniel
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Source: Review copy from the publisher
I can split myself in two...
Something I have to do because of Joy and Matilde. They are my grandmothers and I love them both and they totally love me but they can't stand each other.
Eleven-year-old Allegra shuttles between her grandmothers who live next door to one another but couldn't be more different. Matilde works all hours and instils discipline, duty and restraint. She insists that Allegra focus on her studies to become a doctor.
Meanwhile free-spirited Joy is full of colour, possibility and emotion, storing all her tears in little glass bottles. She is riding the second wave of the women's movement in the company of her penny tortoise, Simone de Beauvoir, encouraging Ally to explore broad horizons and live her 'true essence'.
And then there's Rick who lives in a flat out the back and finds distraction in gambling and solace in surfing. He's trying to be a good father to Al Pal, while grieving the woman who links them all but whose absence tears them apart.
Allegra is left to orbit these three adult worlds wishing they loved her a little less and liked each other a lot more. Until one day the unspoken tragedy which has created this division explodes within the person they all cherish most.
I expected this to be a simple, coming-of-age in the 70s style novel. 11- and then 12-year-old Allegra is a seriously smart kid whose navigation of an absolutely adult world is both impressive and worth the admiration I feel for her. But this isn't really her story so much as it belongs to those around her. Sure, she's a fantastic protagonist and I wouldn't have wanted to read this story through anyone else's eyes, but the emotions of this novel really belong to Joy, Matilde, and Rick.
I really felt for Ally, she had clearly accepted her mother's death but it was never spoken about and you never got a sense she could truly understand what had happened or why it was so secretive. Of course, an adult reader will pick up the nuances of what is going on, but for the child that Ally is it appears to go straight over her head.
The writing here is beautiful, it's a debut but so self assured you know immediately Daniel is one to watch out for in future. To weave so much into a novel - family, fractured relationships, domestic violence, death, female empowerment, and the compulsory school milk program (which made me very thankful to have missed out on) - can often be a fine line between telling the story and overwhelming the reader. Daniel manages it with ease, and allowing Allegra to observe as a child would, rather than give her too much of an adult take was refreshing.
Allegra in Three Parts is available now.
I can split myself in two...
Something I have to do because of Joy and Matilde. They are my grandmothers and I love them both and they totally love me but they can't stand each other.
Eleven-year-old Allegra shuttles between her grandmothers who live next door to one another but couldn't be more different. Matilde works all hours and instils discipline, duty and restraint. She insists that Allegra focus on her studies to become a doctor.
Meanwhile free-spirited Joy is full of colour, possibility and emotion, storing all her tears in little glass bottles. She is riding the second wave of the women's movement in the company of her penny tortoise, Simone de Beauvoir, encouraging Ally to explore broad horizons and live her 'true essence'.
And then there's Rick who lives in a flat out the back and finds distraction in gambling and solace in surfing. He's trying to be a good father to Al Pal, while grieving the woman who links them all but whose absence tears them apart.
Allegra is left to orbit these three adult worlds wishing they loved her a little less and liked each other a lot more. Until one day the unspoken tragedy which has created this division explodes within the person they all cherish most.
I expected this to be a simple, coming-of-age in the 70s style novel. 11- and then 12-year-old Allegra is a seriously smart kid whose navigation of an absolutely adult world is both impressive and worth the admiration I feel for her. But this isn't really her story so much as it belongs to those around her. Sure, she's a fantastic protagonist and I wouldn't have wanted to read this story through anyone else's eyes, but the emotions of this novel really belong to Joy, Matilde, and Rick.
I really felt for Ally, she had clearly accepted her mother's death but it was never spoken about and you never got a sense she could truly understand what had happened or why it was so secretive. Of course, an adult reader will pick up the nuances of what is going on, but for the child that Ally is it appears to go straight over her head.
The writing here is beautiful, it's a debut but so self assured you know immediately Daniel is one to watch out for in future. To weave so much into a novel - family, fractured relationships, domestic violence, death, female empowerment, and the compulsory school milk program (which made me very thankful to have missed out on) - can often be a fine line between telling the story and overwhelming the reader. Daniel manages it with ease, and allowing Allegra to observe as a child would, rather than give her too much of an adult take was refreshing.
Allegra in Three Parts is available now.