In 1933,the world was in the grip of an economic depression not visible in the treed suburbs across town but naked in Footscray,where losing work meant homelessness,starvation and,most horribly,charity. Mildenhall is interested in the women. Peggy,a 19-year-old factory worker,becomes pregnant to the dashing Jack. They marry and live in Lil Martin’s spare room. Spare because Lil’s mother has recently died and Lil,although a superior worker – a wages clerk at Angliss – still needs the money. Her pristine worker’s cottage might not really belong to her.
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The novel slides across time,spanning 1933 until 2181. The child born in 1933,in the calamitous decade before a war was stopped by an atomic bomb,appears in 2020 in aged care. Mildenhall’s capacious grasp falters slightly here as the satire dissolves into smart arsery. Footscray returns in 2031 with two women,La and Cat,deciding to have a baby. La should harvest her eggs,but to do this she must take a job in a place called Want (aka Amazon). La is a voice artist,but what work will come her way now that AI can copy any voice? The work in the world of Want allows Mildenhall’s gift for and delight in satire to sparkle. La and Cat also demonstrate her gift,and delight,in writing about sex.
The final zone,2181,is excellent speculative fiction. Two sisters,Onyx and Maz,who belong to a small tribe or cult led by a brutal man,live by foraging flotsam from the past. The sisters are divers,retrieving objects from the sea that they cannot identify.
Kate Mildenhall has outrageous confidence in her sparkling narrative,in her capabilities. As she should. This is a profound conversation about all those things we put-off talking about,seen in the context of the past,the present and the future. I write this with the backdrop of the devastation of Hawaii and the summer in Australia yet to arrive.