Missus

Harp in the South #1

by Ruth Park

Missus takes us behind the lives of Hughie and Mumma, out of the gritty realism of inner city slum life and into the past of the stations, the bush and the country towns.

Genres: Australia, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Historical, Novels, Audiobook

Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

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 3 out of 5]

3.5★

I hate rating a Park book so low, but this book had a weak beginning & was chock full of unlikeable characters. (although some of them grew on me later on)

I haven't read that many books where the first book was written a very long time after the second. (Park's most famous novel The Harp in the South) So Park was working backwards, to make some of the characters' actions fit what had already happened. It was particularly awkward at the start.

But Park became more comfortable with her characters as the story went on. It is a slight tale, but then real life often is. Hughie is frustrating in Harp in the South & remains frustrating here. So...consistent I guess.

On the jacket Park is quoted as saying;

"So many readers have written to me asking what Grandma and Mumma and Hughie were like when they were young, that I decided to find out for myself"

& I am a bit on the fence whether Park should have left this to the readers' imagination. But, like I said it became & strong story in the end & I got through the read quickly.

The weakest Park for me so far (most of them have been 5★ reads) I'll be interested to read reviews now & find out what it was like for people who read the books in chronological order.

& I have all three books in this trilogy, so I'm planning to reread The Harp in the South& read Poorman's Orange later this year.

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

[M.J. Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is actually my favourite book out of The Harp in the South trilogy - but the whole series is a joy to read! It is beautifully written and very insightful into the lives of the men and women it follows. I read this last because Park wrote it in that order.

If interested, see my reviews for Harp in the South https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and Poor Man's Orange
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Definitely very good reading the whole series - deserve to be considered classics of Australian literature!

[Judith Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have so much enjoyed reading Ruth Park's trilogy, and am very grateful to the Twitter buddy read friend who recommended The Harp in the South for an Aussie read. My knowledge of Australian literature is skimpy (have read maybe only less than a dozen books), and all of my family were amazed never to have heard of Ruth Park - as we all love reading. I've never felt a desire to travel to Australia, but after reading these, one has been planted in my heart! I read the three books in publication order (always prefer to do that!) and have found them beautifully written and very moving. I guess they belong in the same company as another favourite of mine - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and also perhaps How Green Was My Valley: well-told stories with wonderful characters, lovingly drawn. None of these would perhaps be picked by the cerebral editors of the broadsheets, but millions of folks have read and loved them over the years. I am certainly now stimulated to search out more books set in Australia.

[Chrissie]

See below the separate books of the series:

*****************************

The Harp in the South Trilogy
*Missus TBR
*The Harp in the South TBR
*Poor Man's Orange TBR

*Swords and Crowns and Rings 2 stars

[jeniwren · Rating 5 out of 5]

What are delight to discover an Australian classic and a new author in Ruth Park. This being the first of The Harp In The South Trilogy which follows the Darcy family from their beginnings as Irish immigrants and their new life in Australia. The Harp in The South has been chosen for discussion with my f2f bookgroup and pleased now to be acquainted with Mrs and Mrs Darcy as we take up the next chapter of their married life from country Trafalgar to the slums of Sydney.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure what to say about this book. It’s a long-winded story that wasn’t particularly interesting and the characters weren’t appealing either. Ruth Park does however capture the role of women with great insight. The social commentary was the most interesting part of the book.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting novel, a prequel to ‘The Harp in the South’. This book takes the reader to the early days of Hughes and Mumma’s relationship. It’s the early 1920s and Hughie Darcy is a drifter. He falls for the dreamily innocent Margaret Kilker. Margaret falls in love with Hughie. Hughie agrees to marry her but goes off looking for work. Things become complicated for Hughie when he falls in love with another young woman.

There other interesting characters in the book. Jer, Hughie crippled brother, a fun loving guy whom everyone likes, saves up enough money to have a leg operation. Margaret’s sister Josie, marries an embezzler and gambler. She educates herself and sets herself up in her own accountancy business.

Readers who enjoyed ‘Harp in the South’ should find this book a worthwhile, satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 1985 and was the author’s last novel.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Missus was the last novel of Ruth Park (1917-2010).  By this time in 1985, she was calling a spade, a spade.

The old Queen was dead, and King Edward well settled on the throne of England.  In far away New South Wales, in the town of Trafalgar, Hugh Darcy and Margaret Kilker were born.  There were but a few months between their ages, Hugh being the elder.

Trafalgar was first settled by a veteran of that battle.  He used his prize money to go out to New South Wales with a cargo of sheep and horses.  He applied for a grant on the well-watered tablelands, and was assigned thirty convicts as slave labourers.  It was his fancy to give them Jack Tar uniforms to remind him of his glorious days in Nelson's navy.  He called his property Trafalgar, and the four creeks that ran through it Victory, Copenhagen and Nile.

The natives were a trouble at first, believing the sheep to belong to everyone, and much more easily speared than kangaroos. But the master of Trafalgar made short work of them, by inviting them to hang around waiting for white man's titbits, and then feeding them flour cakes primed with strychnine. The survivors did not connect the deaths with the white men; they believed the water had gone bad, as it sometimes did after a dry season.  One old woman tried to warn the white people not to drink it, but they did not understand.  She went away with the two or three others and that was the end of them.  (Opening lines, Chapter One, p.3)

So there it is, an object lesson in how to write respectful Australian historical fiction, penned in 1985 and breathing scorn for the so-casual dispossession and massacre of Australia's Indigenous people.  It's not the only time in this book that Park acknowledges Australia's Black history, and if I had my way, every creative writing school would begin by teaching the protocols and then make this short novel a set text for critique.  Missus is not a novel about Australia's Black history, but that history IMO is part of the story of almost any historical novel set in Australia.

Missus is the love story of Hugh and Mumma Darcy, those much-loved Depression-era characters from The Harp in the South (1948) and Poor Man's Orange (1949). There's no disappointment in reading it, but this prequel relies to some extent on affection for these characters because the reader already knows that Margaret marries Hugh, and the rest is padding.  So there's not much narrative tension; it's the story of the ne'er do well that Hugh Darcy turns out to be in the other novels. And the story of how passionately Margaret loves him all the same.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/29/m...

[Hermien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely Australian story and characters.

[Alex Doenau · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Read in an edition that contains this entire trilogy)

Missus is the written forty years later prequel to the latter two entries in Ruth Park's Harp in the South trilogy (which this reader has still yet to read). Park's inconsistently proofread tale of the youths of her characters smacks of the inevitable and features a largely unsympathetic and unpleasant cast marking time so that Park could justify her title at the very end.

There's not much to Missus if you're unfamiliar with the stories that follow it, but it's hard to see if there would be much there anyway. It's fine, but it is difficult to imagine it being essential.

[C.S. Burrough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all exceptional novelists, the late Ruth Park employed a simplistic yet captivating insight of the human condition. This set her work apart from the workaday potboiler that simply churns out juicy formulaic plotlines. Her work is purely character driven, their storylines organic by-products of characters' endearing quirks and peculiar choices.

This is what made her a literary writer, rather than a fast fiction or romance machine of the Barbara Cartland ilk. Her characters are blessed and burdened with the virtues, shortcomings and consequent dilemmas of ourselves and our loved ones, universal qualities and quandaries that resonate with our inner philosopher.

Her settings, whether city slum or outback dustbowl, are vivid, poignant and glorious. Her understated period detail is delicious in the many flashbacks. So completely does she transport us to other times and places, we feel that gratifying sense of escape that we read for. This raw literary talent shines across all three novels in the series.

This third and final instalment in Park's prestigious trilogy, the prequel, Missus, begins in the 1920s. Our beloved established characters become less central presences, absentee players for much of the novel, contemplated and discussed by others.

I would have liked more focus on our familiar people, less on their multitudinous forebears and offsiders. I was interested in the trajectory of Hughie and Margaret's pairing, prior to their Sydney transfer and offspring that form the next two novels.

I appreciated this necessity of new protagonists. What I had not envisaged was their persistent dominance and high numbers, many being arguably quite extraneous. Though some were absorbing, this matrix of 'others' pushes aside our special people.

Whilst feeling compensated with certain of Park's other characters, I skimmed many of their scenes, picking out my own characters' episodes, tying in their histories. Though this perhaps typifies prequels, it was also as if Park became uneasy staying with these characters from previous instalments, or just too bored with them to give them the space I wanted for them.

Or maybe we're meant to approach this as a standalone piece. If so, then the publisher's pitching becomes questionable.

None of the above issues affect the quality of prose, as rich, even richer in parts, than in the other two The Harp in the South books, perhaps because by this book she was nearly forty years more practised than with the first two.

Missus, like its sibling novels, transcends family saga into a wider social critique, an intimate study of human emotion. Its stylistic supremacy is evident from the opening lines, hence my four stars despite my other misgivings covered here.

This is interwar regional Australia, its ethos, its people, its places, told by one of the finest.

[Rich B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Came across this on a list of classic Australian fiction. Sounded interesting enough to give it a go, though interest mainly came from the Surry Hills setting of the later two books as know that area well. This book is the first of the trilogy, set in country New South Wales in the early 20th century.

It tells the story of the early years of Margaret and Hugh, mum and dad of the family in the later two books. Their characters are well drawn and mostly consistent with the later two books. Quite fun to see their origin story.

Plus we meet a colourful cast of extra characters including Margaret’s sister and parents and Hugh’s brother, and towards the end another love interest for Hugh. The character set up in the book is one of its strong points.

However, having since read the sequels, only Margaret’s mum from this book makes a significant appearance in those two books. Margaret’s sister / Hugh’s brother barely merit a mention. Hugh’s other love interest is never mentioned again - though he does have a short daliance with another woman in the later books, so maybe the intent was to set up his wandering eye in this book?

This is one of the more challenging bits of the book, where some characters / storylines get set up and then get forgotten and never mentioned again. It all feels very loose and makes the book harder to like.

Saw another review that the author’s intent was to show that real-life was messy, and didn’t always end up in nice tidy stories. But there’s so many loose ends through-out all these books, it feels quite unsatisfying when some stories are left unresolved.

The writing style is also quite loose. In parts, it paints a very evocative picture of life in rural Australia at the time. Some of the dialogue and interactions sing on the page. And then in other parts, it’s long, rambling, gushy and overwritten. At times, you feel your attention wandering or skipping ahead.

It feels soap-opera ish at times, with a series of loosely connected events and happenings, rather than an overarching and coherent story.

It’s worth reading for the characters and scene-setting and has enough good passages to make it overall a decent read. But, it lacks any real drama or coherent story. You reach the end feeling underwhelmed and not much of it sticks in your head.

Not my normal type of read, Too heavy on the gushy sentimentality and too light on the drama to make a it a great read for me. Not one I’d rush to read again, but it had enough going for it to make it a passable read.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read The Harp in the South and Poor Man's Orange when I was at school, and loved them both. I suspect they may be the source of my determination to be a financially independent woman, having now read Missus, which was written in the year that I read the other two books of the trilogy. It's strange that it's taken me almost 40 years to read the prequel!

This is a meandering story, but there is a lot to it. So many different images of what it is to be a "Missus". Eny's role as a dedicated and loving wife and mother, her daughter Josie's short-lived marriage, and then happy second marriage, Steve Tookey's estranged wife in Sydney, Eny's daughter Delia's marriages for money, Mrs Biddle's unconventional and common-law marriage, and lastly Margaret's quiet and strong marriage to Hugh Darcy. Overall, it's a positive view of marriage, when women could hope for not much more - when women could not be financially independent, even if they had the skills and intellect as we saw in the cases of Josie and Aunty Alf.

And the first page sets the scene. Australia, in all its racist colonial history. Ruth Park didn't shy away from telling how it was. Early settlers poisoning the local Aboriginal families with strychnine. Yep, that's how it was and those stories still shape the country we are today.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having recently re-read The Harp in the South for our online book discussion, I have now read Ruth Park’s Missus for the first time. This was written much later than The Harp but it is a prequel in that it explains how Mumma met Hughie and gives background to both their characters. You can see that Park was always going to create Hughie as a rather hopeless character - a well meaning but basically irresponsible larrikin. I don’t think reading Missus really justified the attraction between Margaret (Mumma) and Hugh nor adequately explained the failed love affairs that each of them had prior to marriage. The main appeal to me in this story were the characters of the sister, Jocie, always brighter than the others but marginalised within the family. Her determination and setbacks were convincing. I also enjoyed Hugh’s brother, Jeremiah (Jer) - again, an intelligent character but marginalised because of his physical deformities. I enjoyed the book but it’s not in the same league as The Harp.

[Davida · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first in the Harp in the South trilogy by an enigmatic Australian author. Felt like you were transported back in time.

[Debbie Robson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few months ago I began researching for a story I was writing set in Surry Hills in the 1940s. Not surprisingly images of Ruth Park with some of the Surry Hills residents came up reminding me to read The Harp in the South. I promptly bought a kindle copy with that title and began reading, not paying much attention to the chapter headings.
Here are the opening lines:
“The old Queen was dead, and King Edward well settled on the throne of England. In far away New South Wales, in the town of Trafalgar, Hugh Darcy and Margaret Kilker were born. There were but a few months between their ages, Hugh being the elder.”
Okay, I thought we are going to run through Hugh and Darcy when they were young, when they fell in love and then quickly move to their life as parents in Surry Hills. But no that didn’t happen. Despite this, I quickly realised what marvellous writing I was reading. This is not a romance. It is the real life, almost anti-romance of Hugh and Darcy and the fascinating, original characters that make up both their lives.
First we meet the Darcy family. Hugh’s mother’s life is particularly harsh with a dead first child, a wayward second child Hugh and her third child badly deformed (Jeremiah) and a taciturn husband. This all makes for a difficult childhood for Hugh.
Mr John Kilker of Trafalgar keeps an eye on the two boys and we then meet the Kilker family. John, Rowena and their large brood of children, one of the boys, Owen, is killed in the war. Soon after influenza strikes the town and visitors are barred from entering. One of those is Hugh trying to get to his father’s funeral.
One of the strengths of this novel is the relationship between Hugh and Jer, who is completely dependant on Hugh for his survival. Here are the boys fighting:
“The third time Hugh threw him in the creek. The water was shallow but Jer was mortally afraid of drowning. Hugh watched the boy flounder for a while, then hauled him out. He said:
“You and me got strife, Jer. You can’t go on all your life hanging onto me like a tick. I’m going to take a job somewhere, and you’re going to stay here.”
Park is brilliant at evoking the challenges her characters face. Jer is a cripple and can only move around with difficulty but he manages to ingratiate himself with the people at the various stations that Hugh works at. He plays music and tells entertaining stories. He also lives his life vicariously through others. Here is Park delving deeper than surface storytelling:
“Once or twice he was caught ratting a man’s belongings, and slapped over the head. Strangely, these men seemed to understand what he was after. They did not accuse him of thieving. They were indulgent towards him. Jer did not care, but Hugh was humiliated.”
I really enjoyed Park’s descriptions of country towns.
“The sky was the larkspur of summer rather than early winter. The sun sent out a roaring heat, drying up the puddles on the Domain, letting the flags lighten and blow out with a crack from their poles.”
I also love the whole anti-romance between Hugh and Margaret.
Here is one of Hugh’s early thoughts about Margaret:
“The formless, protective feeling had left Hughie’s consciousness and was forgotten. The girl was as silly as a turkey.”
Here’s another:
“He intended to take Margaret down to the casuarina groves beside the creek before the spell of the play wore off. He stole a sideways glance at her. She looked bemused enough for anything.” Lol.
Here’s Margaret:
“Oh, Lord, I’m a goner all right,” she thought. She prayed about it: ‘Holy Mary, let me have Hughie Darcy, and I’ll try to be such a good wife. I don’t know why I love him but I want to be with him all the time. Didn’t you feel like that about St Joseph?” Delightful.
Another strength of this book is the depiction of Rowena Kilker, especially her relationship with her daughter Margaret.
“If it was me,” she said rashly, “if Hughie left me, after we were married, I mean, I’d pine away.”
“Get the meat in the pot before you cry over its loss,” snapped her mother.
Around the time I read this line I decided it was going to take a while until we got to Surry Hills. Hughie and Margaret were still unmarried. Later still, towards the end of the novel I realised that of course this was the stand alone novel, Missus, that Park wrote as a prequel to the Harp in the South in 1985. A technically brilliant prequel to her more famous Harp in the South. Wonderful lines, interesting characters and a long gone Australia that should never be forgotten. Highly recommended and if you haven’t read The Harp in the South, read this one first.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Disclaimer: I am actually reviewing the whole trilogy, so I have copied and pasted this review for all three books)

Having previously only read Ruth Park’s books for children and adults, I decided time was well overdue to get around to her “Harp in the South” trilogy – which had actually begun with “A Harp in the South” before she followed it with “Poor Man’s Orange”, then she wrote the prequel “Missus.” So even though I had read them in order of the family’s story, they were written and published in a different order and I do believe they should actually be read in the publication order (ie start with the second one.) This is because I feel as though things were “revealed” in the prequel that I feel are more powerful when read in retrospect.

I had started reading the book in print (but can’t remember why this got abandoned – I think I had to return the library copy) so I discovered the Bolinda audio versions of all three, and having the same narrator across the three stories was great. I picked up this story pretty much the day after finishing “A Little Life” and I was immediately struck by Park’s economical use of language, her ability to draw very distinct characters and to be able to fit a lot of story within a single chapter.

The books take us into the world of the Sydney slums – which has now sadly disappeared under developments and “improvements.” The characters are warm, distinct and good people in spite of their circumstances. Although they have uncharitable thoughts about people based very much on stereotypes (the religious differences, attitudes to migrants etc) their actions, which are much more important, speak so much more.

It’s hard to really specify why these stories are so important to understanding a large section of Australia’s past – it’s not a perfect trilogy of books by any means, and at times there’s a lot that made me seriously cringe – but despite having a journalist’s ear for recording the daily minutiae of slum life, Park was able to take a step back and show perspective on the microcosm they lived in that goes beyond just a kitchen sink drama. I especially drew a lot out of how second and third generation Australians found their new identities while retaining the habits of the “Old Country” and the ghosts of previous family members.

I think it’s important to read the books without seeing the movies, adaptations or various talks – although these are well worth visiting afterwards – and I see why “Harp in the South” was on so many school syllabuses (although I’d be disappointed if they aren’t today) in spite of being so scandalous when first published. The story of the books and their publication do provide an interesting context to the story Park was trying to tell and the circumstances they came from (basically Park was writing the books from within a setting not too dissimilar to her characters’ lives.) I would like to now explore her memoirs to know more about where these stories came from and how Park interpreted them.

[Boy Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The order in which the books were written is so interesting. With this being the last but adding some context that arguably makes the later novels a bit more understandable. Sadly Hugh's care for Jer is lost along with Jer himself in the later texts, and it's sad because it would have given his character a far more complex personality.

We also get country Australia here as opposed to the city slickers of the later two books. I think Park nails it. The Harp in the South was published chapter by chapter in the paper and possibly not conceived as a whole before the first chapter was published. Meanwhile Missus feels complete. The narrative arc feels solid and less episodic than the later books in the trilogy.

There's still a certain rambling quality to Missus though. And it comes entirely from Hugh Darcy's restlessness. He doesn't know what he wants and so he roams. In East of Eden we have Samuel wrestling with himself and his potential greatness. But Samuel is content to fight that out alone and at home. Hugh Darcy has to be on the road and he has to drag others down with him. And he'll spend the rest of the trilogy doing so.

In many ways this is a funnier book than the other two. The Harp in the South has some funny moments but I feel like Park was chuckling away throughout this book. The wayward priest being kept in line by such a stoic parishoner is absolutely hilarious, as is the pudding eating contest, and countless other moments.

I'll read anything Park has written and I think with this she's really delivered.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel was an afterthought. The Harp in the south went so well Park decided to write a sequel to it, Poor Man’s Orange. Then for her last published novel, she decided to write a prequel to Harp and this is it. If Harp was her best work (yet I only gave it 3 stars) Missus is definitely her worst (I have yet to read Poor Man’s Orange). In a sort of objective stream of consciousness she describes how Hugh and Margeret, after a stormy engagement in which Hugh was a right double-dealing bastard, finally got married. Harp follows narrative wise although it was written first. Reading this I felt Park was telling us about the story not telling the story itelf: she is outside, but nonetheless rambles on hopping from character to character, time frame to time frame, and incident to incident. In short, a shambles. Yet, occasionally there are excellent reflections on the time and place (variously late 1800S and 1920s), descriptions of rural life, sharp snapshots of incidents (like Steve and Quilley), very sharp dialogue and the huge male dominance of the times.

[Roie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I read this series in order the books were released and I’m struggling to decide whether that was a good idea or not. I feel like if I had read in chronological order I wouldn’t have gotten into them so easily because this book is very dry. But I also feel like because I already had opinions on the two central characters of Hughie and Margaret from the other two books my reading of this was very different then if I came in cold.

I struggled through this, I was expecting a different take on the character of Hughie but it was similar to what you read in Poor Man’s Orange and it is quite frustrating. I wished there was more of Margarets story because it mainly focuses on Hughies life story before they meet then his following their meeting.

It’s definitely not as good as The Harp in the South or Poor Man’s Orange but I do put that down the fact that it was written 40 years after those two.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only recently discovered Ruth Park, through an Australian cousin. But she is viewed as a classic author on that continent. I'm so pleased to make her acquaintance. Her writing has just verve and originality. Her characters are so alive, with flaws and traits that defy explanations. Aunt Alf in 'Missus' is a case in point. Her life is peppered with episodes of magic realism. This is the first in a trilogy, written long after the first two books. It offers backstories to much love characters from 'The Harp in the South' and 'Poor Man's Orange'. This was the only title available to me on our library catalogue, but as a first introduction to these families I do not feel at a loss. The timelines are sometimes a little confusing. Parks has a tendency to leap from one viewpoint to another without warning. But her storytelling is so compelling, and is well worth the effort.

[Cathy M · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was really one star to me in terms of enjoyment, because I hold Ruth Park in such high regard because of The Harp in the South and Playing Beattie Bow. So I was very disappointed. But if I hadn't known it was Ruthie I'd at least give 2 stars.
Rambling, with very little Ruth Park magic. And yet, written only five or so years after Playing Beattie Bow. What happened? Was she trying to make more money? Why didn't her agent/ manager tactfully tell her this was a bomb? Nothing to me will ever detract from The Harp in the South, but publication of this was a poor decision. Nobody's perfect. Hasn't changed my overall love for Ruth Park and Harp in the South.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was grateful there were 2 more books to follow this story or it would have been difficult to start another book for a while.
The story and strong charachters remind me of the Dutch books I've read of regional sagas of that same time period, with tough folk and all that befalls them. The local Dr who know them well and understands them and the Pastor (Priest) who bellows from the pulpit if neccessary. The Copper using his common sense in an emergency. I love the basic decency portrayed for all the upheavals.
This will be a favourite re-read in time.

[Sarah Bray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started reading “harp in the south” on my kindle but didn’t realise the kindle edition was actually the trilogy with the same name as the middle book in the trilogy…was taking forever to get through it so I downloaded the audio version from the library then discovered I had been reading book 1 of the series called “missus”. Have finished that now and taking a break and will resume with book 2 of the audio one day.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an eye opening entry into the world of 1920s Australia centred on the Irish immigrant community. The power of the church and authority in general is substantial and poverty the accepted way of things in this milieu, but while a few souls manage to set their own destinies for a time, most are pulled back into the low expectations of their ilk. A worthwhile read on all fronts.

[Priyanka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I read it in the wrong sequence I was supposed to read in the older of the publication. I didn't really enjoy it. I found it a bit confusing as it felt like the author wanted you to know these characters prior to reading this book so I am hoping to start the second book very soon to get a better grasp of what's going on in the story.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was really disappointed with this book. Intended to read the trilogy back to back, but will have a break before I move on to part 2.
Limited storyline dragged out for a whole book.
I love Playing Beatie Bow, but this book was completely lacking that magic.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This the prequel to The Harp in the South. I know that this was an Aussie classic but this book was just ok for me. I am looking forward to reading others in the series as I have been told it gets better.

[Bernadette Moran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insight to life in early Australia, beautifully written, with interesting characters, woven together in a lovely story.
This book is the first of the trilogy, but written after the others. Enjoyed this more than the others.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had its ups and downs but beautifully written and held me enough to need to finish the trilogy