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Gin Toad's life in the Australian outback is a mere existence. Years earlier, Mr. Toad's proposal of marriage offered her only possible escape from the mental hospital in Perth where she had been confined by her family. Dwelling on her husband's subsistence farm, shunned by the locals both for her albinism and her bourgeois sophistication, she has long realized her mistake, having merely traded one prison for another. Abandoning her passion for the piano and any hope for a fulfilling life, she steels herself raising her and Toad's two surviving children, even as she mourns for, and is haunted by, the one that died. When two Italian prisoners-of-war arrive to serve as labour on the farm in 1943, long suppressed desires are released - Gin's, for the sensual and sympathetic Antonio; and corset-collecting Toad's, for the younger and sleeker John. The events which unfold will change the course of all their lives and fan the flames of small-town bigotry. This beautiful Australian novel contains memorable characters who are poignant, tragic, tender and funny. The writing is exquisite - poetic, yearning and richly evocative - and the insight into the lives of these social outsiders, and also the ways of rural communities of the past, is revelatory.
Paperback, 376 Pages, Published 2010
Author: Goldie Goldbloom