Favel Parrett's new novel will enhance her significant reputation.Credit:Justin McManus
The novel has two settings,Prague and Melbourne. It also has a careful time line,1938-1980. It concerns two sisters,one who stayed in Prague in 1938 and the other who left and ended up in Melbourne after spending the Second World War in London. Both sisters have observant and solitary grandchildren for whom they are responsible. In Melbourne there’s a red-haired girl whom her beloved grandfather calls Little Fox,in Prague there is Ludek,a boy about the same age living with his equally beloved grandmother.
Sisters Mana and Eva,in the last year of high school and with all the joys of the world marshalling before them,collide with destiny in the form of a small-time,vindictive Nazi whom Eva – running,exhilarated,happy – bumped in the street. He identified her as a girl who had come from the patriotic demonstration and with that she had to leave. Only there is a twist. And it is Mana who,at 17 left her father,her house,her childhood behind. Most of all she left her sister.
The novel is like a Vuillard interior,sharp angles and sheets of light cut with blotches of pure colour. And it has the feel,and the shape of an interior that becomes more intimate the deeper you look. At first,you’re uncertain what you are looking at but you cannot look away.