A Sign of Her Own
by Sarah Marsh
(Tinder Press, $37.99)
It’s the fast-changing world of Boston and London in the 1870s, a time of invention and industrialisation. Our heroine, Ellen Lark, is a bright young woman who became deaf at the age of four after scarlet fever. Now in her teens, she is studying speech with Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born Boston University professor and inventor.
Bell, whose mother was deaf, teaches deaf students to speak through his father’s method, Visible Speech. He is strongly anti-sign language among the deaf community, seeing it as isolating. Many deaf and mute schools at the time punished children for using it rather than communicating in speech or writing.
Ellen is a product of this education, though she signed with her sister when young and became adept at lip reading with her English mother. Intrigued by the ebullient Bell, Ellen, with good copy-writing skills, helps him so he can work on his inventions, including what will become the telephone. Her life becomes more complicated when she meets Frank, a deaf and mute young man who teaches her to embrace sign language and shows her how self-reliant it can be with its own printing press and businesses. But Bell disapproves of the relationship.
Sarah Marsh alternates between two timelines: the period in Boston, and three years on when Ellen is living in London with her stepfather and his nephew, Harmon Bardsley, her fiancé. Bell is newly arrived in England, promoting his telephone invention. He wants Ellen to support his claim on the patent for the telephone, even as she is enlisted by a connection of Frank’s to spy on Bell and discover if he, in fact, stole the telephone technology from another inventor.
Marsh herself is deaf, as are her parents, and she writes about the condition beautifully and with deep understanding. She creates excellent tension in a story based on true elements, as the men in Ellen’s life chase glory and money, trying to bend her to their will.
A Life of Her Own
by Ellen Feldman
(Macmillan, $37.99)
Fanny Fabricant welcomes her doctor husband Max back from World War II only to lose him tragically, shortly after they’ve shifted to the New York suburbs with their little girl Chloe. An intelligent young woman who studied English literature at a liberal women’s art college, Fanny swiftly has to find a plan B. Back to New York City they go, to be close to Fanny’s aunt Rose, a successful seamstress who sent her to college and is her closest family member. Through Rose’s contacts, Fanny finds work in the theatrical world of radio serials, as an assistant to the doyenne of radio soaps, Alice Anderson.
Through the story, Ellen Feldman explores the choices available to women in post-war America. While Fanny is slightly pitied because she has to go out and work, her life is far more interesting than those around her. It is enriched by meeting actors and writers, and she’s also offered a return to a safer life, wooed by a doctor happy to take on a new family.
The late 40s and 50s are a fraught time in American politics. The House Committee of Un-American Activities is looking for those with communist ties and any other alleged bad behaviour. The creative community is a favourite group to target. Fanny sees the consequences up close as her radio friends come under fire, giving her an unexpected opportunity to start a writing career.
You’re in safe hands with Feldman, who explores themes of grief and widowhood, women’s careers and parenting and loyalty, sharing some themes with Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry. Fanny is a redoubtable heroine who is asked to make brave decisions during a time when a wrong step could send her and Chloe straight into poverty.
Take Two
by Danielle Hawkins
(Allen & Unwin, $36.99, out March 26)
Laura is a successful communications manager on a break and back in her home town for a visit before walking from one end of New Zealand to the other. But her plans are thrown out the window when the family of her ex-boyfriend come back into her life.
Laura and Doug were together for 13 years but he didn’t want children. He went on to have two with his next girlfriend, now wife, Kat, and another is on on the way. Laura always loved Doug’s family, spending a lot of time at the family farm. So when she hears the father, Peter, is very ill she goes to visit.
After a sequence of events, she begins to spend time there, including with Mick, the madly social kid brother, four years younger, who’s always ready with a smart quip. Mick, who always thought Doug didn’t treat Laura right, is quickly interested, leaving Laura with a dilemma.
Hawkins weaves a number of intrigues through this action-packed story. Take Two is a great small-town drama in which local gossips try to make mischief out of Laura’s situation, while the family bookshop needs to be kept running and a murky property development is being sold to vulnerable locals.
It’s a cosy read, though the author isn’t afraid to broach bigger issues, such as how families manage illness, how women deal with infertility and the sometimes tricky relationships between mothers and daughters.
