The Dark Thread

by Capel Boake (Pseudonym), Doris Boake Kerr

The Dark Thread is a family saga beginning in 1895 and stretching to the heady days after WWI. Sol Burton, a Jewish man marries Lil, a young woman already pregnant to a sailor that has perished on a voyage. The story follows the lives of Sol and Lil and their four children. The dark thread of the title refers to two of the children who have the dark Jewish looks of their father and grandmother.

320 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1936

About the author

Doris Boake Kerr (29 August 1889 at Summer Hill, Sydney – 5 June 1944 at Caulfield, Victoria), a writer who published using the pseudonyms 'Capel Boake'[1] and Stephen Grey,.[2] Her publishing career began with a story appearing in the Australasian in January 1916. Other stories and stories appeared in the Victorian School Paper. She wrote four novels:
Painted Clay (Melbourne, 1917, published by the Australasian Authors' Agency and reprinted by Virago London in 1986);
The Romany Mark (New South Wales Bookstall Co, in 1923 );
The Dark Thread (Hutchinson London 1936), and
The Twig is Bent, written with the aid of a Commonwealth literary grant but published posthumously (Sydney, 1946).
Her subject matter included the options available to women in the early twentieth century, circus life, and early Melbourne history.
She used the pseudonym Stephen Grey when writing in collaboration with Bernard Cronin.
Capel Boake was also a poet: a collection of her verse was published posthumously in 1949 as The Selected Poems of Capel Boake. (Source Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Debbie Robson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Around ten years ago I tried to borrow/buy a copy of Eleanor Dark’s first novel Slow Dawning published in 1932. It was not available for love or money. In the end I managed to photocopy the book and I am so glad I did. It was an enjoyable novel. Recently I put in an interlibrary loan for Capel Boake (Doris Kerr’s) third novel The Dark Thread published in 1936, not expecting it to be available. I was gobsmacked to actually have it turn up at my local library soon after. I have just finished reading it and it is an accomplished book.
Last month I read Doris’s unpublished manuscript date stamped 1923 entitled The Flying Shade. You can find my review on Goodreads. It was a slightly disappointing read and the difference between the two books was immediately obvious. The narrative of The Dark Thread is confident and her characters convincingly evoked. Her second book The Romany Mark is about circus life and written around the same time as The Flying Shade. It’s hard not to wonder if there was another unpublished manuscript written during those 13 years.
The book opens with Lil who lives in Port Melbourne. She is pregnant to a Scandinavian sailor who has died and luckily for her a gentle Jewish man called Sol Burton, is very happy to marry her, despite the baby. There is a problem though - his elderly mother is hard and unapproachable and makes no attempt to welcome Lil into the family. Sol and his mother own a rather dingy secondhand shop that Lil also begins to work in. There is a bit of relief for Lil though with her friendship to Flo who works at the restaurant next door where Lil used to work until her marriage to Sol.
All good so far but it wasn’t long before I realised I had no idea when the book was set. Was this the early 1930s? I decided no. There was no mention of the last war or the 1920s. It wasn’t until page 62 that I realised that I was reading a family saga and that the book had opened around 1895. This is from page 62.
“The century had drawn to its close. The Boer War had been fought and won. The old Queen had died and the nation had mourned. Edward had lived through his short reign and George his son ascended the throne. At home, Federation had been carried and the Australian Commonwealth proclaimed. Electricity had superseded gas. Motor-cars had come to stay, and men were endeavouring to fly. The world had changed a lot since her marriage, Lil thought. She had been married nearly fifteen years, for Linda had just turned fourteen.”
Gradually we get to know the four Burton children. The fair haired Linda, the dark haired Stephen and Rachel (they are the dark thread of the Jewish heritage inherited from their father) and the very vain and pretty, fair haired Lilian. The relationship between the four children - their very different personalities and attitudes are really the strength of the novel and kept me reading through the trials of the Great War.
Flo still plays a part in their lives and once the war is over and Rachel comes into her own, I couldn’t put the book down. The last fifty pages, mainly involving Rachel and her new life, are what I had originally been hoping to find. A worthwhile read and a rare glimpse of suburban Melbourne/Port Melbourne during the first twenty years of the last century.