Review
An interesting modern fairytale, says Verbal.
- Scatterheart
- Catnip
Scatterheart
This riches-to-rags-to-riches story opens on 15 year old Hannah Cheshire as she awaits trial in London, in 1814, for a crime she didn’t commit.
The naive Hannah is a ‘young lady of quality’ who has fallen on hard times after the disappearance of her businessman father. Sentenced to transportation, Hannah is ill prepared for the realities of life on a convict ship and finds it difficult to come to terms with the change in her circumstances. When a young officer on board the ship befriends her, Hannah must figure out if his intentions are honest or if, as her friend Long Meg queries, he is really the gentleman he seems to be. Australia itself is scarce better than the ship, and deemed ‘too saucy for service’, Hannah is shipped off to the factory to card wool and wait for the next blow to land.
It’s not often one thinks about what life was like for those first Australian settlers, and Wilkinson’s research and attention to detail are commendable. From the ‘Mermaid dances’ in the factory, to the rigid social boundaries in Australian society (policed by the ‘exclusives’), her description of life as a convict is often harrowing, though always fascinating. Each chapter of the book opens with a snippet from the tale of Scatterheart, as told to Hannah by her tutor, Thomas Behr. This actual fairytale acts as a counterpoint to Hannah’s own tale, underscoring the changes in our heroine as events open her eyes to her own nature. An interesting modern take on the fairytale.
