- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Fiction
- Review Article: Yes
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
The premise of Jam Dreaming is worthwhile; three cultures and generations meet over food. Eileen is an Aboriginal girl who lives in a squat. She is grieving for her mother, who died of alcoholism. Trying to find warmth beside a restaurant at night, she stumbles into the life of Mama Jocsdi, who cooks traditional European food. Mama’s sister, Nellie, with whom she escaped the Nazis, remains an elusive character. Eileen also makes friends with two other elderly women; Aboriginal matriarch Aunty Lois, and her sister. Eileen begins to learn skills and identity from these women.
- Book 1 Title: Jam Dreaming
- Book 1 Biblio: Sid Harta Publishers, $24.95 pb, 382 pp, 9781921829581
Maria, daughter of Mama’s restaurateur friend Jacob, is the other pivotal character. A brittle academic who experienced a dark episode in her youth, she now has the chance to find love with sixty-year-old Sam. Their romance could hold the novel together, but Maria treats gentleman Sam with inexplicable condescension. Maria voices disturbing views about suffering and accuses him: ‘That’s the trouble with you holocaust survivors. You don’t accept that anyone else but yourselves has ever suffered.’ Sam’s hangdog devotion is impossible to reconcile with Maria’s treatment of him. The characterisation is, consequentially, fatally weakened. Authorial comments in italics about this relationship, in particular, break the narrative with pretentious interruptions.
The editor and publisher have done the author a disservice. The overuse of adjectives and adverbs is grating and could easily have been removed; the author’svoice is pompous at times and the story has been squandered rather than concluded. These flaws could have been avoided with judicious editing. The result is disappointing, because the author clearly has potential as a writer and has raised issues about race and culture that deserve a platform.
Comments powered by CComment