In prosperous, comfortable, complacent 21st century Australia, it’s somewhat chastening to read this first novel from Olga Masters (1919-1986). Set in a small farming community south of Sydney after The Great War, it’s a window on a different kind of life, one where there would be no bread on the table if a woman did not bake it every second day or so, and no hot water for tea if she did not light and tend the fire for the stove. A life where women made all their clothes themselves and the household linen too. A life so pinched with poverty that the Reverend Colin Edwards struggles to mask his anxiety about the cost of a phone call, and feels wasteful over the cost of a stamp when a letter home to his mother in England is merely one page long.

It’s also a life that is strictly gendered. If the shortage of men during the war created new opportunities for women, those opportunities had mostly contracted afterwards although Rachel still runs the post office. For Jack Herbert’s daughters Enid and Una, the future is either marriage and motherhood, or spinsterhood. (The word ‘spinster’ itself has gone out of contemporary usage!) Jack (see a Sensational Snippet featuring Jack here) feels no compunction in wishing a life of spinsterhood for Enid because she is the better housekeeper and since the death of his wife Nellie, he wants Enid to keep making the pickles and jams and have dinner on the table when he wants it, as if by instinct. Olga Masters does not shy from suggesting that, ominously, he is also attracted to Enid in other ways.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2015/02/14/loving-daughters-by-olga-masters/ ( )