The novel begins with sixty-year-old Tasia meeting up with the secret love of her youth, before retracing her steps to her early life in Macedonia. The reader’s expectations of romance are never satisfied. Instead, we follow Tasia’s journey from rural poverty, oppression, and ignorance, through numerous disappointments, to self-realisation. She survives her schooling in a place where women are not encouraged to be educated, becomes the friend of a confident young midwife Olga, and joins her on the boat to Australia in search of a better life.

This self-published work is not a literary novel – Gessa-Liveriadis is too fond of ‘gurgling streams’ and ‘rustling leaves’ – and would have benefited from a firm editorial hand. There is inconsistency in the writing, which is at its best in the middle section, where we are drawn into the young girl’s moral confusion, her adolescent passions, and her growing awareness of the wider world. She progresses to adulthood against a backdrop of vindictive women’s voices, as the villagers gather around the community water tap, like a chorus from an ancient Greek tragedy. The author’s tendency to heighten emotion works well here to underline the fatalism and narrow-mindedness that Tasia seeks to escape.

This novel will appeal particularly to those who can relate to Tasia’s migrant experience. It is an intimate portrayal of a young woman’s search for identity and purpose: a coming-of-age story that preserves the experience of a Greek migrant woman and the social history of Macedonia.

CONTENTS: JULY–AUGUST 2011