Serpent's Delight

by Ruth Park

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Genres: Australia, Fiction, Drama

239 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Ruth Park was a New Zealand-born author, who spent most of her life in Australia. She was born in Auckland, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas.

During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her.

Ruth claimed that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.

Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created The Muddle-Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).

Park received awards in Australia and internationally.

Winner of the Dromkeen Medal.

Reviews

[Carol, She's so Novel ꧁꧂ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this amazing book really resonated with me.

My husband is a (non practicing) Catholic & his mother had eight children in thirteen years in the 50s & the early 60s. So, a generation later than the Pond family, but devout Catholics in NZ were still confronting some of the issues in this book in the 1970s,* that Park creates for this working class Australian family in the 1950's.

So what happens when one sister (maybe) has visions? How do the others feel, how do the parents react? & the wider community, how will they feel?

This book is not only a study of faith, but also of being trapped, manipulation and consequences. As much as I loved Park's best known work, The Harp in the South, I think this book is superior. I'm still thinking about it, & I think it will still be in my head for weeks.

* No, not visions but Unwanted and/or endless pregnancies.

This book was originally published as Serpent's Delight, in my opinion a far superior title. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think the women's looks other than poor Elva being worn down & losing hers! were relevant to the book.

Edit; Be warned that the other review for this book contains a couple of major unmarked spoilers.

https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...

[Robyn333 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well with trepidition I thought this would be a trial to read, but I have loved it, really could not put it down, will read more Ruth Park.
The religion is not really too heavy, the story is about a fictitious vision one of the four daughters had. The mother is so over bearing having been powerless for so many years and just kept the home, now she has an opportunity to take over her families lives. She is not really a loving mother to all her daughters being very judgemental regarding two of her daughters. The extended family with the grandchildren being used as servants for the parents. The poor old Dad ends up with a stroke which no one has seen coming on with all the attention on the youngest daughter Geraldine and her mother.

[Cate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ruth Park had a talent for writing a world, a place, a family in a way you can almost feel it. This book is delightful. Don't read anymore reviews in here though as one contains a spoiler it's better to read without.

[Georgia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5