A
The story flows from the end of World War Two in France, to the Australian outback in 1994. It’s a delightful story of a girl raised on a large property who leaves home for new worlds. Joy is a champion rider, later a veterinary student, still later a model and then finally she settles down. It is a wonderful 350 page novel for beach reading. It speeds along at a fast clip as Joy grows from a child of the outback to a world traveller passing in and out of relationships. The novel will be loved by teenage girls imagining such a path in life. It will be loved by young women who have experienced similar roads to maturity.
The descriptions of the outback property are particularly interesting. The capers of Joy’s friends and lovers are less interesting unless you are a young, an unmarried or an unsettled woman. The story is well written and keeps you drawn in. You just have to find the resolutions to the many dramas – near financial ruin of a fashion company, a horse jumping accident, life in London with Rockers, then in France with an elderly relative.
There are the usual misunderstandings between mother and daughter, the wise grandfather’s love of life, the trials of leaving lovers and the homesickness felt by most Aussies on their ‘London’ leg of their life. There is no graphic sex, no contemptible character and no problem that can’t be resolved. A perfect novel for a day at the beach.
A CURIOUS DAUGHTER by Jules Van Mil is published by Pan Macmillan Australia, July, 2023
Paperback $26
Kindle. $16
Also available on Audible