Canongate Books| 2 November 2023|257 pages| Review copy| 4*

Synopsis

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.

My thoughts:

Kate Grenville is one of my favourite authors, so I was looking forward to reading Restless Dolly Maunder. I was not disappointed.

This is the fictionalised life story of Kate Grenville’s maternal grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder, known as Dolly. She was the sixth child of Thomas and Sarah Maunder, born in Currabubula, New South Wales, Australia in 1881. She was not only restless but also clever and determined – she knew what she wanted and she did her best to achieve it.

As a child she longed to be a pupil-teacher but in a world where women were subservient to men she had to obey her father who wouldn’t allow it. She could marry or be a spinster. Eventually she married Bert Russell and began a life away from the farm and her family, moving from place to place and from one business to the next to better herself and her family – a shop, a boarding house, a pub, and a grand hotel.. But she was a difficult person, not easy to like and unable to show love. Hers was a success story but also a tragedy as her wanderlust impelled her to keep striving for more and better things in life.

Restless Dolly Maunder casts light not just on Dolly’s life but also on life in Australia for most of the 20th century. The book has a relentless pace as it tells her life story as she propels herself from place to place and from business to business, enjoying success whilst it lasted and enduring all else, not stopping to pause breath in her restless pursuit of what came next.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

I can recommend all of Kate Grenville’s books. One of my favourites is One Life:My Mother’s Story, her biography of Nance Russell, Dolly’s daughter. Hers was a happier and more fulfilled life.