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Restless Dolly Maunder
Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors were starting to creak ajar for women. Growing up in a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, Dolly spent her restless life pushing at those doors.
Most women like her have disappeared from view, remembered only in family photo albums as remote figures in impossible clothes, or maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe handed down through the generations. Restless Dolly Maunder brings one of these women to life as someone we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with.
In this compelling new novel, Kate Grenville uses family memories to imagine her way into the life of her grandmother. This is the story of a woman, working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who was able—if at a cost—to make a life she could call her own. Her battles and triumphs helped to open doors for the women who came after.
Most women like her have disappeared from view, remembered only in family photo albums as remote figures in impossible clothes, or maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe handed down through the generations. Restless Dolly Maunder brings one of these women to life as someone we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with.
In this compelling new novel, Kate Grenville uses family memories to imagine her way into the life of her grandmother. This is the story of a woman, working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who was able—if at a cost—to make a life she could call her own. Her battles and triumphs helped to open doors for the women who came after.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 18, 2023
About the author
Kate Grenville
37 books749 followersKate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published eight books of fiction and four books about the writing process. Her best-known works are the international best-seller The Secret River, The Idea of Perfection, The Lieutenant and Lilian's Story (details about all Kate Grenville's books are elsewhere on this site). Her novels have won many awards both in Australia and the UK, several have been made into major feature films, and all have been translated into European and Asian languages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 358 reviews
May 10, 2024
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 - One of those books where, upon reaching the end, you read what the author intended to accomplish and can see that she didn't. What starts as a potential feminist novel about a woman with no real options in Australia from a century ago transforms into a semi-biography of a woman who thinks that she is better than the people around her. Her husband actually cheats on her, and I felt more sympathetic towards him.
I think the problem is that there isn't any struggle. Her father says "no" to her dreams, and then she moves on. She finds a secret about her husband, and then she moves on. Her farm is destroyed, and then she moves on and has instant financial success. And so the novel continues. It is the kind of character that has such a conventional and, in a way, privileged life that only a family member can have the idea that she can be an interesting character in a novel.
This was the weakest that I've read from this year's Women's Prize for fiction, but it is readable, which makes me think that another type of reader, more conventional than me, can appreciate it more.
I think the problem is that there isn't any struggle. Her father says "no" to her dreams, and then she moves on. She finds a secret about her husband, and then she moves on. Her farm is destroyed, and then she moves on and has instant financial success. And so the novel continues. It is the kind of character that has such a conventional and, in a way, privileged life that only a family member can have the idea that she can be an interesting character in a novel.
This was the weakest that I've read from this year's Women's Prize for fiction, but it is readable, which makes me think that another type of reader, more conventional than me, can appreciate it more.
April 18, 2024
Kate Grenville’s latest book Restless Dolly Maunder is the fictional account of her maternal grandmother’s life, she has childhood memories of an aloof, stern, thin, cranky woman and she always wondered what made her that way.
Sarah Catherine Maunder (Dolly) was born in 1881 on a farm near Currabubula, New South Wales, her father Thomas cared more about his sheep than he did about his wife and seven children. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, by law all children had to attend school until they turned fourteen, Dolly wanted to be a teacher, her father informed she was going to stay home, help her mother, and until she got married.
Dolly wanted more, her mother’s life was hard, never ending backbreaking chores, cooking, cleaning, washing and mending and putting up with her husband’s moods. Dolly vows her own children will receive a good education, boys and girls, it’s the only way to escape poverty and get ahead.
Dolly was driven, she didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife, she was obsessed with making money and she and her husband Bert ran and owned various businesses. The family moved countless times, Dolly would get restless, she thought they could do better and her daughter Nance lost count of how many school she attended.
I received a copy of Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville from Canongate Books and NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased and honest review. Using childhood memories and notes from her mother Nance Russell, Ms. Grenville crafts an interesting narrative about being a woman in Australia in the late 1880's and into the 1950’s.
Dolly was restricted by society’s expectations of women’s roles, most men thought education was a waste of time for their daughters, it was hard to be a female in an Aussie man’s world and Dolly did her best to push the boundaries and overcome obstacles and hardship. A story about an inspirational woman, I really admired Dolly’s tenacity, she loved her children in her own way and Dolly did her best, spoke up and didn’t worry about what people thought.
I highly recommend this book, it gives the reader a look at the life of an average Australian woman, and five stars from me.
Sarah Catherine Maunder (Dolly) was born in 1881 on a farm near Currabubula, New South Wales, her father Thomas cared more about his sheep than he did about his wife and seven children. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, by law all children had to attend school until they turned fourteen, Dolly wanted to be a teacher, her father informed she was going to stay home, help her mother, and until she got married.
Dolly wanted more, her mother’s life was hard, never ending backbreaking chores, cooking, cleaning, washing and mending and putting up with her husband’s moods. Dolly vows her own children will receive a good education, boys and girls, it’s the only way to escape poverty and get ahead.
Dolly was driven, she didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife, she was obsessed with making money and she and her husband Bert ran and owned various businesses. The family moved countless times, Dolly would get restless, she thought they could do better and her daughter Nance lost count of how many school she attended.
I received a copy of Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville from Canongate Books and NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased and honest review. Using childhood memories and notes from her mother Nance Russell, Ms. Grenville crafts an interesting narrative about being a woman in Australia in the late 1880's and into the 1950’s.
Dolly was restricted by society’s expectations of women’s roles, most men thought education was a waste of time for their daughters, it was hard to be a female in an Aussie man’s world and Dolly did her best to push the boundaries and overcome obstacles and hardship. A story about an inspirational woman, I really admired Dolly’s tenacity, she loved her children in her own way and Dolly did her best, spoke up and didn’t worry about what people thought.
I highly recommend this book, it gives the reader a look at the life of an average Australian woman, and five stars from me.
December 2, 2023
I greatly enjoyed this aptly entitled novel, which proceeds in linear fashion, not quite cradle to grave, but very close. It focuses on Dolly, who’s born to a poor Australian farming family in 1880, telling her story into the 1950s. Dolly is a bright little girl and dreams of becoming a teacher. “Over my dead body” is her father’s harsh response. Educating children beyond the absolute basics is simply not part of the culture. After finishing at the one-room rural school, a girl is expected to stay on the farm and perform domestic duties until she’s married off. Dolly chafes against this fate, but recognizing that the lives of most spinsters are pitiable, she resigns herself to it.
Dolly does experience some romance as a young woman. She falls in love with one Catholic boy and then another, but such relationships can go nowhere: Dolly’s a “Proddy”, Church of England, and the denominations don’t mix. One of the poorest and grubbiest of Dolly’s schoolmates, Bert Russell, ends up becoming a hired hand on Dolly’s father’s farm. She has an aversion to him. Her mother, on the other hand, becomes fixated on the young man and determines he’ll be the one to save her restless, difficult daughter from spinsterhood. Mrs. Maunder keeps a terrible secret about Bert from Dolly, which the young woman discovers only after her marriage and the couple have settled on a farm. Although Dolly typically looks ahead, this secret, her mother’s betrayal, and her own feelings of humiliation haunt her through the years.
There is no love lost between this husband and wife, but neither is a stranger to difficult circumstances; they stay together, producing three children. Dolly has considerable drive. She’s the one who gets her family off a farm that is repeatedly battered by the weather—drought, wind, rain, and hail—and yields nothing for several years in a row.
Grenville tells of the family’s adventures moving to first to the outskirts of Sydney to run a shop and then to a series of small towns where they own and manage pubs, hotels, and a beach house. In spite of her ongoing problems with Bert, Dolly acknowledges that the two of them make good business partners, largely because her husband, for all his faults, respects her intelligence. Motherhood, however, is a tremendous challenge for her. She is not fulfilled by it and is often harsh towards her children. She wishes she could be different. She doesn’t lack self-awareness, but she cannot mend her ways. She’s quick to anger, dictatorial, and controlling. The kids are regularly uprooted, as Dolly’s restlessness inevitably kicks in every couple of years. She craves novelty, stimulation, and challenges. Everything changes, of course, with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the effects of which ripple across the world. Strangely, it is only when all the Russell family has worked for is lost that Dolly becomes most free.
We tend to forget how restricted women’s lives were not even a century ago. This simply told story provides valuable reminders. As I was reading, I was aware of echoes of Dolly’s problems in my grandmother’s, mother’s, and my own life. Some of the attitudes addressed here are with us yet. The world still isn’t as tolerant as it might be of women who choose even slightly unconventional paths.
While there’s a certain repetitiveness in reading about Dolly and Bert’s many relocations and ventures, I still enjoyed the book. Recommended.
Dolly does experience some romance as a young woman. She falls in love with one Catholic boy and then another, but such relationships can go nowhere: Dolly’s a “Proddy”, Church of England, and the denominations don’t mix. One of the poorest and grubbiest of Dolly’s schoolmates, Bert Russell, ends up becoming a hired hand on Dolly’s father’s farm. She has an aversion to him. Her mother, on the other hand, becomes fixated on the young man and determines he’ll be the one to save her restless, difficult daughter from spinsterhood. Mrs. Maunder keeps a terrible secret about Bert from Dolly, which the young woman discovers only after her marriage and the couple have settled on a farm. Although Dolly typically looks ahead, this secret, her mother’s betrayal, and her own feelings of humiliation haunt her through the years.
There is no love lost between this husband and wife, but neither is a stranger to difficult circumstances; they stay together, producing three children. Dolly has considerable drive. She’s the one who gets her family off a farm that is repeatedly battered by the weather—drought, wind, rain, and hail—and yields nothing for several years in a row.
Grenville tells of the family’s adventures moving to first to the outskirts of Sydney to run a shop and then to a series of small towns where they own and manage pubs, hotels, and a beach house. In spite of her ongoing problems with Bert, Dolly acknowledges that the two of them make good business partners, largely because her husband, for all his faults, respects her intelligence. Motherhood, however, is a tremendous challenge for her. She is not fulfilled by it and is often harsh towards her children. She wishes she could be different. She doesn’t lack self-awareness, but she cannot mend her ways. She’s quick to anger, dictatorial, and controlling. The kids are regularly uprooted, as Dolly’s restlessness inevitably kicks in every couple of years. She craves novelty, stimulation, and challenges. Everything changes, of course, with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the effects of which ripple across the world. Strangely, it is only when all the Russell family has worked for is lost that Dolly becomes most free.
We tend to forget how restricted women’s lives were not even a century ago. This simply told story provides valuable reminders. As I was reading, I was aware of echoes of Dolly’s problems in my grandmother’s, mother’s, and my own life. Some of the attitudes addressed here are with us yet. The world still isn’t as tolerant as it might be of women who choose even slightly unconventional paths.
While there’s a certain repetitiveness in reading about Dolly and Bert’s many relocations and ventures, I still enjoyed the book. Recommended.
October 6, 2023
4.5 stars. Imagine trying to re-imagine your own grandmother’s life as a work of fiction. It would be easy enough to record the facts of her life - when she was born, married, had children - but not so easy to think like her, to imagine how she must have felt and thought as a child, a young wife, a mother and an old, dying woman.
Kate Grenville has written the story of her grandmother’s life sensitively, portraying the frustrations of a woman born towards the end of the 19th century, clever but denied a proper education, unable to achieve her early ambitions because of the constraints of her gender at that time. Both my grandmothers were born around the same time. I’m now wondering what they would have done with their lives if they had the choice and freedoms that we now have. My maternal grandmother had a beautiful singing voice and her teacher wanted her to study professionally but that just wasn’t considered proper at the time and instead she married young.
Dolly Maunders is a difficult character. By the time she has her children, life has made her bitter and she struggles to love her children, or even to connect with them. Her inner struggles are shared by most of us. When we don’t behave the way we should, or speak to someone as kindly as we should, we regret it instantly and berate ourselves inwardly. Dolly spends her life doing this but can’t find a way out of being who she is.
There were times I wanted to know more about her thoughts and feelings at certain stages (which is why I’ve rated it 4.5 instead of 5 stars) but this is a short novel and the pace is relentless as there is a whole life to cover. Fans of Kate Grenville will know how moving the ending is likely to be but you can never be prepared enough. Highly recommended.
With thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for a review copy.
Kate Grenville has written the story of her grandmother’s life sensitively, portraying the frustrations of a woman born towards the end of the 19th century, clever but denied a proper education, unable to achieve her early ambitions because of the constraints of her gender at that time. Both my grandmothers were born around the same time. I’m now wondering what they would have done with their lives if they had the choice and freedoms that we now have. My maternal grandmother had a beautiful singing voice and her teacher wanted her to study professionally but that just wasn’t considered proper at the time and instead she married young.
Dolly Maunders is a difficult character. By the time she has her children, life has made her bitter and she struggles to love her children, or even to connect with them. Her inner struggles are shared by most of us. When we don’t behave the way we should, or speak to someone as kindly as we should, we regret it instantly and berate ourselves inwardly. Dolly spends her life doing this but can’t find a way out of being who she is.
There were times I wanted to know more about her thoughts and feelings at certain stages (which is why I’ve rated it 4.5 instead of 5 stars) but this is a short novel and the pace is relentless as there is a whole life to cover. Fans of Kate Grenville will know how moving the ending is likely to be but you can never be prepared enough. Highly recommended.
With thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for a review copy.
June 29, 2024
This could easily have been one of the Persephone books I love so much. Dolly was born at the end of the 19th century, and this is the story of her life. For a smart girl in Australia at that time, you had 3 choices. Teaching, nursing or marriage and children. The first two careers had to be approved by your father, and in any case, given up once you married. Dolly wanted to teach, her father said no, "Over my dead body", to be exact, so marriage and children it was. Dolly was restless because she knew she was capable of so much more, and the only way she could get even a semblance of control over her own life was to bully and nag her husband, and later, her three children. She succeeded spectacularly, then failed during the Depression, then maintained for a while, only to find a bit of freedom for herself late in life.
"What she really wanted was what she'd never had: to be a person on her own, free of any obligations, away from the great sticky tangle of family. To float wherever she liked, like those men in the Depression who'd turned their backs on everything and gone on the wallaby."
I didn't know until the end that this was the re-imagined story of the author's own grandmother. She was no one special in history, just one among millions of women doing the same thing we all do: making the best of what we've been handed.
"All you could say was, you were born into a world that made it easy for you or made it hard for you, and all you could do was stumble along under the weight of whatever you'd been given to carry. No wonder at the end of it you're tired, and sad. But glad to have done it all, even the mistakes. Glad to be alive, too. Even if you were only alive enough to watch another day's light slide along the wall, and wait for the night."
"What she really wanted was what she'd never had: to be a person on her own, free of any obligations, away from the great sticky tangle of family. To float wherever she liked, like those men in the Depression who'd turned their backs on everything and gone on the wallaby."
I didn't know until the end that this was the re-imagined story of the author's own grandmother. She was no one special in history, just one among millions of women doing the same thing we all do: making the best of what we've been handed.
"All you could say was, you were born into a world that made it easy for you or made it hard for you, and all you could do was stumble along under the weight of whatever you'd been given to carry. No wonder at the end of it you're tired, and sad. But glad to have done it all, even the mistakes. Glad to be alive, too. Even if you were only alive enough to watch another day's light slide along the wall, and wait for the night."
July 26, 2023
4.5★s
Restless Dolly Maunder is the eleventh novel by award-winning Australian author, Kate Grenville. In the late nineteenth Century, Sarah Catherine Maunder is born, the sixth and second-last child of Thomas and Sarah Maunder. She’s quickly known as Dolly by everyone on Forest Farm and in the town on Currabubula. She is lucky enough to have a school teacher who is strict about attendance, recently made compulsory, and enjoys school and learning.
Theirs is a hard, simple life, but at her aunt’s house, “a special pair of scissors just for cutting grapes … told her something important: there was a world beyond the one she knew.” Dolly is smart enough to entertain becoming a pupil-teacher, but that grandiose idea is quickly vetoed by her father: when she leaves school at fourteen, she will be needed on the farm. She soon understands that a life of endless, repetitive chores awaits her, chores that must be done to a standard that pleases her mean father, if she is to avoid punishment.
“Girls were of no account, you learned that early on. Good enough to make the bread and milk the cow, and later on you’d look after the children. But no woman was ever going to be part of the real business of the world.”
“What could a woman do but marry, and once you were married you belonged to your husband’s world and had to turn your back on your own. It wasn’t betrayal. It was the way the world was.” Dolly observes “A beautiful woman might have a bigger choice of men. But she had to pick one, and whichever one she picked, she’d still end up a wife, with a life as small as the plainest Plain Jane’s.”
The alternative, remaining a spinster, didn’t bear thinking about: “… their moment had passed, the wave they might have ridden into marriage had broken and ebbed into a bit of foam and washed them up in a back street in Curra with nothing and no one.” So Dolly marries Bert Russell, and they take up sheep farming in Rothesay.
But soon enough Dolly realises that success at farming is at the mercy of the weather. A hailstorm decides it for her: a little shop in Wahroonga is a much better bet. But once that is running well, Dolly finds herself looking for more: before long, she also runs a boarding house in Newport. And from there, a series of pubs get the Dolly and Bert treatment: hard work, improvement, profit. But “…the old restlessness: it seemed to be dyed deep in the fabric of who she was, her need to keep moving.”
Eventually, Dolly has the insight to see that “A woman … couldn’t take her future in her own hands and shape it in the way she wanted. Couldn’t even be a teacher if she wanted, and that was surely a humble enough thing to wish for.” She and Bert weather adverse natural phenomena, a global financial crisis and a world war, noting “You could do your best, but if life wanted to pull the rug out from under you it would find a way to do it.”
She also comes to acknowledge to herself her inability to connect with her children: “She heard herself sliding the pointed tip of sharp remarks at him… somehow she’d let all her own hurts be made into that weapon, and she’d turned it outwards against Frank in particular, the baby of the time of betrayal. He’d grown a surface to deflect the blade, but eventually it had found a place to slip in.”
Basing her novel on the life of her maternal grandmother, Grenville gives the reader a fabulous collision of reality and imagination, interweaving fact with fiction, all of it rich in historical detail, with a marvellously diverse cast of real people and (probably) fictional characters. It does feel like her intention to understand this enigmatic woman is realised.
As always, Grenville renders her era and setting with consummate ease, and descriptive prose is exquisite. A few examples: “Her red curly hair like a shining river glinting with light” and “It gave him a special bitter satisfaction to go over and over the stories of his humiliations … Dolly’s father told over the hurts like jewels, turning them in his memory so they flashed with his anger” and “His life had curved in towards hers, just for that moment, but curved away again like railway tracks, two sets of rails travelling towards different places.”
Only Grenville’s choice to omit quote marks for speech, at times causing confusion, prevents a higher rating. Brilliant Australian historical fiction.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Text Publishing.
Restless Dolly Maunder is the eleventh novel by award-winning Australian author, Kate Grenville. In the late nineteenth Century, Sarah Catherine Maunder is born, the sixth and second-last child of Thomas and Sarah Maunder. She’s quickly known as Dolly by everyone on Forest Farm and in the town on Currabubula. She is lucky enough to have a school teacher who is strict about attendance, recently made compulsory, and enjoys school and learning.
Theirs is a hard, simple life, but at her aunt’s house, “a special pair of scissors just for cutting grapes … told her something important: there was a world beyond the one she knew.” Dolly is smart enough to entertain becoming a pupil-teacher, but that grandiose idea is quickly vetoed by her father: when she leaves school at fourteen, she will be needed on the farm. She soon understands that a life of endless, repetitive chores awaits her, chores that must be done to a standard that pleases her mean father, if she is to avoid punishment.
“Girls were of no account, you learned that early on. Good enough to make the bread and milk the cow, and later on you’d look after the children. But no woman was ever going to be part of the real business of the world.”
“What could a woman do but marry, and once you were married you belonged to your husband’s world and had to turn your back on your own. It wasn’t betrayal. It was the way the world was.” Dolly observes “A beautiful woman might have a bigger choice of men. But she had to pick one, and whichever one she picked, she’d still end up a wife, with a life as small as the plainest Plain Jane’s.”
The alternative, remaining a spinster, didn’t bear thinking about: “… their moment had passed, the wave they might have ridden into marriage had broken and ebbed into a bit of foam and washed them up in a back street in Curra with nothing and no one.” So Dolly marries Bert Russell, and they take up sheep farming in Rothesay.
But soon enough Dolly realises that success at farming is at the mercy of the weather. A hailstorm decides it for her: a little shop in Wahroonga is a much better bet. But once that is running well, Dolly finds herself looking for more: before long, she also runs a boarding house in Newport. And from there, a series of pubs get the Dolly and Bert treatment: hard work, improvement, profit. But “…the old restlessness: it seemed to be dyed deep in the fabric of who she was, her need to keep moving.”
Eventually, Dolly has the insight to see that “A woman … couldn’t take her future in her own hands and shape it in the way she wanted. Couldn’t even be a teacher if she wanted, and that was surely a humble enough thing to wish for.” She and Bert weather adverse natural phenomena, a global financial crisis and a world war, noting “You could do your best, but if life wanted to pull the rug out from under you it would find a way to do it.”
She also comes to acknowledge to herself her inability to connect with her children: “She heard herself sliding the pointed tip of sharp remarks at him… somehow she’d let all her own hurts be made into that weapon, and she’d turned it outwards against Frank in particular, the baby of the time of betrayal. He’d grown a surface to deflect the blade, but eventually it had found a place to slip in.”
Basing her novel on the life of her maternal grandmother, Grenville gives the reader a fabulous collision of reality and imagination, interweaving fact with fiction, all of it rich in historical detail, with a marvellously diverse cast of real people and (probably) fictional characters. It does feel like her intention to understand this enigmatic woman is realised.
As always, Grenville renders her era and setting with consummate ease, and descriptive prose is exquisite. A few examples: “Her red curly hair like a shining river glinting with light” and “It gave him a special bitter satisfaction to go over and over the stories of his humiliations … Dolly’s father told over the hurts like jewels, turning them in his memory so they flashed with his anger” and “His life had curved in towards hers, just for that moment, but curved away again like railway tracks, two sets of rails travelling towards different places.”
Only Grenville’s choice to omit quote marks for speech, at times causing confusion, prevents a higher rating. Brilliant Australian historical fiction.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Text Publishing.
July 5, 2023
A wonderful historical novel about Dolly Maunder, an intelligent young woman born in the late 1800s who is restless for a life beyond wife and mother. As a poor country girl there’s not much more on offer. This book follows her life and is based on Kate Grenville’s grandmother. The writing is excellent as you’d expect and I was drawn into the story of this ordinary (extraordinary) woman.
March 14, 2024
As a genealogy enthusiast I enjoyed this from understanding and admiring the research behind it. The characterisation was well constructed and honest in both the strengths and flaws of the protagonist and other characters. But the narrative tripped through the events too quickly and left me feeling somewhat detached and a little bored.
October 18, 2023
This was a fascinating story which I read in one sitting. It’s so awful reading about the frustrations of being a female, clever, restless, ambitious and having to live with the expectations of the time; also inspiring to read how Dolly never gave up on her dreams and made the best of her situation. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.
June 1, 2024
3.5
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.
Kate Grenville's "Restless Dolly Maunder" tells the story of her grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder, affectionately known as 'Dolly'. Set against the backdrop of late 19th to early 20th Century Australia, the novel offers a vivid historical fiction picture of a woman who seeks to struggle against the societal norms and constraints imposed upon her. We first encounter Dolly in 1881 growing up on the family farm in New South Wales.
Dolly is a complex character, portrayed at times as unlikeable and abrasive. The strength of the narrative lies in its exploration of the historical forces that shape her as she pursues some independence amidst societal expectations.
Married to Bert, a relationship that Dolly settles for, somewhat devoid of love and plagued by secrets, Dolly finds some solace from her oppressive upbringing. However, her dreams of a different life, perhaps as a schoolteacher, remain unfulfilled. Together, they take-on various business ventures, from farming properties to hotels, leveraging opportunities and profiting from them, until the Great Depression strikes, leading to financial ruin and a return to a hard-scrabble life on a farm, as they struggle to make ends meet.
Dolly eventaully leaves Bert, finding a kind of difficult independence. Yet, it is in these final chapters that the costs of her constrained life choices are revealed, particularly in her strained relationship with her children, who grapple with loving a distant and difficult mother. The novel's portrayal of this complicated relationsihp with her children is its distinctive strength.
Grenville's prose quite effectively captures Dolly's restless struggle with the broader societal context that inhibits her life opportunities. However, despite its well-written nature, the novel falls short in offering anything substantially new in terms of narrative technique or style. A closing passage, where Dolly reflects on the generational burden of women during an encounter with her granddaughter, Cathy (the fictionalised Kate Grenville), encapsulates the overarching theme of the novel:
“She thought of all the women she'd ever known, and all their mothers before them, and the mothers before those mothers, locked into a place where they couldn't move. My generation was like the hinge, she thought. The door had been shut tight, and when it started to swing open, my generation was the hinge that it had to be forced around on, one surface grinding over another. No wonder it was painful.”
Overall, "Restless Dolly Maunder" is a competent historical novel, but it left me wishing for something more. Its inclusion on the Women's Prize shortlist comes as a surprise, given its lack of distinctiveness.
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.
Kate Grenville's "Restless Dolly Maunder" tells the story of her grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder, affectionately known as 'Dolly'. Set against the backdrop of late 19th to early 20th Century Australia, the novel offers a vivid historical fiction picture of a woman who seeks to struggle against the societal norms and constraints imposed upon her. We first encounter Dolly in 1881 growing up on the family farm in New South Wales.
Dolly is a complex character, portrayed at times as unlikeable and abrasive. The strength of the narrative lies in its exploration of the historical forces that shape her as she pursues some independence amidst societal expectations.
Married to Bert, a relationship that Dolly settles for, somewhat devoid of love and plagued by secrets, Dolly finds some solace from her oppressive upbringing. However, her dreams of a different life, perhaps as a schoolteacher, remain unfulfilled. Together, they take-on various business ventures, from farming properties to hotels, leveraging opportunities and profiting from them, until the Great Depression strikes, leading to financial ruin and a return to a hard-scrabble life on a farm, as they struggle to make ends meet.
Dolly eventaully leaves Bert, finding a kind of difficult independence. Yet, it is in these final chapters that the costs of her constrained life choices are revealed, particularly in her strained relationship with her children, who grapple with loving a distant and difficult mother. The novel's portrayal of this complicated relationsihp with her children is its distinctive strength.
Grenville's prose quite effectively captures Dolly's restless struggle with the broader societal context that inhibits her life opportunities. However, despite its well-written nature, the novel falls short in offering anything substantially new in terms of narrative technique or style. A closing passage, where Dolly reflects on the generational burden of women during an encounter with her granddaughter, Cathy (the fictionalised Kate Grenville), encapsulates the overarching theme of the novel:
“She thought of all the women she'd ever known, and all their mothers before them, and the mothers before those mothers, locked into a place where they couldn't move. My generation was like the hinge, she thought. The door had been shut tight, and when it started to swing open, my generation was the hinge that it had to be forced around on, one surface grinding over another. No wonder it was painful.”
Overall, "Restless Dolly Maunder" is a competent historical novel, but it left me wishing for something more. Its inclusion on the Women's Prize shortlist comes as a surprise, given its lack of distinctiveness.
October 26, 2023
I didn’t like the way this was written. I remained mildly interested in the story, which didn’t really go anywhere and was told in small snippets of time with no depth or feeling. Certain memories were repeated so often I was sick of them instead of feeling like they were poignant and relevant. The characters weren’t likeable or hate-able, just nothing. It only made sense once I finished and realised it’s a family story. That’s exactly what it feels like, excerpts of a life told so many times they’ve lost their meaning.
April 28, 2024
2.5 ️ surprised this is on the Women's Prize for Fiction Short List
SYNOPSIS
Kate Grenville fictionalises her grandmother's story in "Restless Dolly Maunder," depicting a strong woman defying societal constraints in late 19th century Australia to forge her own path. Despite marriage and children, Dolly's relentless pursuit of independence and love shapes a life of triumph.
MY THOUGHTS
*scratches head wondering how this was shortlisted
- It was an easy accessible read and I consumed it in 24hrs so that says something
- BUT I found the story repetitive, a bit mediocre and uninspiring
- YES it's a story of female oppression in the late 1800 early 1900s and Dolly's incessant need to change, to move and avoid the expectations on her life but it wasn't as engaging as I hoped it to be.
- And bar the tokenistic note at the end of the book (literally a few sentences) the fact that Dolly was white and had a level of privilege and there was zero acknowledgement of the First Nations people in Australia and the land/property she was taking was angering.
- Overall I found this a bit meh!
SYNOPSIS
Kate Grenville fictionalises her grandmother's story in "Restless Dolly Maunder," depicting a strong woman defying societal constraints in late 19th century Australia to forge her own path. Despite marriage and children, Dolly's relentless pursuit of independence and love shapes a life of triumph.
MY THOUGHTS
*scratches head wondering how this was shortlisted
- It was an easy accessible read and I consumed it in 24hrs so that says something
- BUT I found the story repetitive, a bit mediocre and uninspiring
- YES it's a story of female oppression in the late 1800 early 1900s and Dolly's incessant need to change, to move and avoid the expectations on her life but it wasn't as engaging as I hoped it to be.
- And bar the tokenistic note at the end of the book (literally a few sentences) the fact that Dolly was white and had a level of privilege and there was zero acknowledgement of the First Nations people in Australia and the land/property she was taking was angering.
- Overall I found this a bit meh!
May 18, 2024
Shortlisted of for the Women's Prize 2024
"The only way we know many of those women born in the 1880s is from stiff, unreal old studio photos. Unless they were privileged or exceptional, most women vanished from the record. Their lives often can't be reconstructed beyond a few dates - their births and deaths, when their children were born - and maybe a recipe for drop scones or oxtail soup."
Grenville recreates her grandmother's life in this fact based fictional account. This is a book I could really relate to as a family historian, but also as a woman trying to understand what made her grandmother, and to some extent her mother, the women they were. Tough women, survivors. Women who struggled to show love. A whole lifetime, two world wars, the great depression, surviving on the land, the ups and downs of business, bearing children and having to be a 'female' in a male dominated world - and all in 250 pages. I confess I am not a massive Grenville fan but this book really touched me.
"The only way we know many of those women born in the 1880s is from stiff, unreal old studio photos. Unless they were privileged or exceptional, most women vanished from the record. Their lives often can't be reconstructed beyond a few dates - their births and deaths, when their children were born - and maybe a recipe for drop scones or oxtail soup."
Grenville recreates her grandmother's life in this fact based fictional account. This is a book I could really relate to as a family historian, but also as a woman trying to understand what made her grandmother, and to some extent her mother, the women they were. Tough women, survivors. Women who struggled to show love. A whole lifetime, two world wars, the great depression, surviving on the land, the ups and downs of business, bearing children and having to be a 'female' in a male dominated world - and all in 250 pages. I confess I am not a massive Grenville fan but this book really touched me.
Read
September 13, 2023The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Restless Dolly Maunder
‘Nobody writes historical fiction like Kate Grenville. Again and again she has brought history—both the official records and the messy tensions in the margins—to life…Women like Dolly Maunder rarely make it into the history books. Here, she’s honoured by one of our best.’
Qantas Magazine
‘Grenville uses exacting research to imagine her way into the life of another—this time a woman she once feared, and with whom she appeared to have come to some understanding.’
Sian Cain, Guardian
‘…the writing sparkles with Grenville’s gift for transcendently clear imagery…a work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding.’
Guardian
‘Grenville’s quiet and insightful prose makes this book a joy and an inspiration to read.’
Readings
‘Grenville’s achievement in this deeply moving book is that in resurrecting the woman behind her grim-faced grandmother, she’s given us insight into a generation too easily dismissed as archaic, narrow-minded, inflexible and slightly ridiculous. Yet again, she’s transformed faded history into something pulsing and alive.’
Good Reading (5 stars)
‘Family memoir and reimagined history dovetail beautifully in Restless Dolly Maunder.’
Conversation
‘An easy and fast-paced read...as much a story of Australia’s history as it is the tale of a strong, intelligent and thwarted woman whose struggles helped transform the lives of generations to follow. There’s a sense that in recreating her grandmother with an empathetic and careful eye, Grenville is also healing the past.’
Compulsive Reader
‘[Restless Dolly Maunder] successfully interweaves memoir, biography and remembrance of things past into a nuanced piece of fiction – Grenville has produced a novel that is unafraid of pushing the scope of what it means to unpick the intricacies of family history. There is a tenderness to the weight of the realities Grenville offers us – an awareness that love can wound, but that it can also redeem.’
ArtsHub
‘Grenville’s pacy prose invests the humdrum details...with clarity and drama. Her generous detail and spare, evocative imagery bring the historical landscape to life.’
Australian Book Review
‘An effortless, economical performance. It convinces, without showing the art involved.’
Age
‘Nobody writes historical fiction like Kate Grenville. Again and again she has brought history—both the official records and the messy tensions in the margins—to life…Women like Dolly Maunder rarely make it into the history books. Here, she’s honoured by one of our best.’
Qantas Magazine
‘Grenville uses exacting research to imagine her way into the life of another—this time a woman she once feared, and with whom she appeared to have come to some understanding.’
Sian Cain, Guardian
‘…the writing sparkles with Grenville’s gift for transcendently clear imagery…a work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding.’
Guardian
‘Grenville’s quiet and insightful prose makes this book a joy and an inspiration to read.’
Readings
‘Grenville’s achievement in this deeply moving book is that in resurrecting the woman behind her grim-faced grandmother, she’s given us insight into a generation too easily dismissed as archaic, narrow-minded, inflexible and slightly ridiculous. Yet again, she’s transformed faded history into something pulsing and alive.’
Good Reading (5 stars)
‘Family memoir and reimagined history dovetail beautifully in Restless Dolly Maunder.’
Conversation
‘An easy and fast-paced read...as much a story of Australia’s history as it is the tale of a strong, intelligent and thwarted woman whose struggles helped transform the lives of generations to follow. There’s a sense that in recreating her grandmother with an empathetic and careful eye, Grenville is also healing the past.’
Compulsive Reader
‘[Restless Dolly Maunder] successfully interweaves memoir, biography and remembrance of things past into a nuanced piece of fiction – Grenville has produced a novel that is unafraid of pushing the scope of what it means to unpick the intricacies of family history. There is a tenderness to the weight of the realities Grenville offers us – an awareness that love can wound, but that it can also redeem.’
ArtsHub
‘Grenville’s pacy prose invests the humdrum details...with clarity and drama. Her generous detail and spare, evocative imagery bring the historical landscape to life.’
Australian Book Review
‘An effortless, economical performance. It convinces, without showing the art involved.’
Age
March 6, 2024
I’ve thought about it, and I’ve upped my star rating. Dolly haunts me. Ever more so because her life was really led. Imagined psychology, but real actions. Her constant movement from place to place echoes my own in so many ways that it is unsettling, and unexpected. I’m meant to learn from her, I think. Something about how to live a life, and all that. Year 11 students beware, I think they’ll pop this one on the inter-textuality list alongside Bookbinder of J and I wholeheartedly support that. Kate G writes masterfully and I appreciated the ending. Clearly a work of healing family scars and immortalising those members of our family we find confronting, but formative.
Now, how do I stop Dolly from staring at me sternly from the bedside table?
Now, how do I stop Dolly from staring at me sternly from the bedside table?
April 24, 2024
Shortlisted for 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction
This was a perfectly fine novel, but I am left a bit baffled about why it was nominated for such a prestigious prize. I appreciated that this book was written as a tribute to Kate Grenville’s grandmother, and it was an absolutely beautiful, at times wrenching, portrayal of a rather difficult woman’s restless urges to break out of the boxes she’s been placed in. This novel provided excellent commentary on how women were so constrained and what happens when some of those barriers begin to be lifted. It depicts the struggle of a family trying to make it through the difficult and joyful times, especially as our main character Dolly navigates the infidelity of her husband and trying to relate to her children. The restless ambition of Dolly, as she tries to forge her own path in life, was depicted in such a realistic way. I particularly loved this idea of exploring one woman’s life against the churn of history, as we see how she’s affected by two World Wars and the Great Depression.
However, I struggled with this book because there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable or note-worthy about it. It was clearly cathartic for Kate Grenville to write, and I do not want to denounce that at all. As someone who was close to her own grandmother, I can relate to the desire to want to inhabit the life of one of our relatives, especially since Kate’s grandmother was such a difficult figure. This is a poignant tribute to her.
But I couldn’t help feeling like I had read this story before. Maybe that’s the point: Stories like this, of women just like Dolly, are what carved the path for our current freedoms. That may be true, but I didn’t find anything unique to grasp onto. This novel tackles a huge span of time in a short amount of pages, and I didn’t necessarily feel connected to anything that happened. There were times the prose felt perfunctory, and Dolly’s restlessness and endless pursuit of the next big business got a bit tedious to read. I can’t imagine I will think much about this book now that I’ve finished it.
But on the bright side, it did teach me a lot about Australian history that I didn’t know, and now I desperately want to pick up more Australian literature!
This was a perfectly fine novel, but I am left a bit baffled about why it was nominated for such a prestigious prize. I appreciated that this book was written as a tribute to Kate Grenville’s grandmother, and it was an absolutely beautiful, at times wrenching, portrayal of a rather difficult woman’s restless urges to break out of the boxes she’s been placed in. This novel provided excellent commentary on how women were so constrained and what happens when some of those barriers begin to be lifted. It depicts the struggle of a family trying to make it through the difficult and joyful times, especially as our main character Dolly navigates the infidelity of her husband and trying to relate to her children. The restless ambition of Dolly, as she tries to forge her own path in life, was depicted in such a realistic way. I particularly loved this idea of exploring one woman’s life against the churn of history, as we see how she’s affected by two World Wars and the Great Depression.
However, I struggled with this book because there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable or note-worthy about it. It was clearly cathartic for Kate Grenville to write, and I do not want to denounce that at all. As someone who was close to her own grandmother, I can relate to the desire to want to inhabit the life of one of our relatives, especially since Kate’s grandmother was such a difficult figure. This is a poignant tribute to her.
But I couldn’t help feeling like I had read this story before. Maybe that’s the point: Stories like this, of women just like Dolly, are what carved the path for our current freedoms. That may be true, but I didn’t find anything unique to grasp onto. This novel tackles a huge span of time in a short amount of pages, and I didn’t necessarily feel connected to anything that happened. There were times the prose felt perfunctory, and Dolly’s restlessness and endless pursuit of the next big business got a bit tedious to read. I can’t imagine I will think much about this book now that I’ve finished it.
But on the bright side, it did teach me a lot about Australian history that I didn’t know, and now I desperately want to pick up more Australian literature!
May 7, 2024
Dolly Maunder is indeed restless! Born towards the end of the 19th century, as a young girl, it is expected that she will work on her parents' farm. She will be married, she will have children, and she better not even think of having a life of her own. Though her adult life does start off this way, she is able to make her husband, Bert, see the business sense in owning a shop rather than the back breaking work of farming and so starts Dolly's restlessness, and their many moves to different towns.
The book follows Dolly from childhood through to becoming a grandmother. She is a very determined character, a cold mother, and many would say she was selfish. Throughout the book, she tells her children she only wants the best for them, but is it really that she wants what is best for herself?
Although I found Dolly to be a not particularly likeable character, as a woman living in 2024 with the freedom to do pretty much as I please, I could feel how Dolly was stifled. You are torn between feeling that she is, at times, heartless, whilst also recognising her need to be free.
This is the first book of Kate Grenville's that I've read and what an exceptional writer she is. Restless Dolly Maunder is beautifully written, flowed well and is packed full of emotion. The historical note at the end will also make you realise how Kate wrote this book with so much passion.
The book follows Dolly from childhood through to becoming a grandmother. She is a very determined character, a cold mother, and many would say she was selfish. Throughout the book, she tells her children she only wants the best for them, but is it really that she wants what is best for herself?
Although I found Dolly to be a not particularly likeable character, as a woman living in 2024 with the freedom to do pretty much as I please, I could feel how Dolly was stifled. You are torn between feeling that she is, at times, heartless, whilst also recognising her need to be free.
This is the first book of Kate Grenville's that I've read and what an exceptional writer she is. Restless Dolly Maunder is beautifully written, flowed well and is packed full of emotion. The historical note at the end will also make you realise how Kate wrote this book with so much passion.
May 13, 2024
Setting: New South Wales, Australia; 1881-1945.
'I haven't told the story of Dolly Maunder because she was unique or extraordinary. She wasn't, and that's the very reason I think her story is worth telling. It would have been repeated hundreds, even thousands of times: women doing their best, against every obstacle, to give their daughters a better chance at happiness than they'd had, and to find a corner of an unfriendly world where a woman could make a life for herself.'
So the author comments at the end of this work, which is in essence a fictionalised biography of her own grandmother - which I didn't realise until the very end when confronted with a photograph of Dolly herself.
The story was told from Dolly's point of view, from her birth on a small farm deep in rural New South Wales where, as the youngest daughter, she appeared to get an easier ride than most of her siblings. Yet her academic achievements and her desire to make more of her life, dreaming of becoming a teacher, were soon quashed by her largely-illiterate father. Her struggles through life were all apparently about needing change and some form of upward progression. Disappointments with men and with societal norms are rife throughout the book which, even as a male reader, I could appreciate and commiserate with. It was certainly an intriguing tale although perhaps not as good as some of the other work I have read from this author. Still a 4-star read for me for the story and the writing - 8/10.
'I haven't told the story of Dolly Maunder because she was unique or extraordinary. She wasn't, and that's the very reason I think her story is worth telling. It would have been repeated hundreds, even thousands of times: women doing their best, against every obstacle, to give their daughters a better chance at happiness than they'd had, and to find a corner of an unfriendly world where a woman could make a life for herself.'
So the author comments at the end of this work, which is in essence a fictionalised biography of her own grandmother - which I didn't realise until the very end when confronted with a photograph of Dolly herself.
The story was told from Dolly's point of view, from her birth on a small farm deep in rural New South Wales where, as the youngest daughter, she appeared to get an easier ride than most of her siblings. Yet her academic achievements and her desire to make more of her life, dreaming of becoming a teacher, were soon quashed by her largely-illiterate father. Her struggles through life were all apparently about needing change and some form of upward progression. Disappointments with men and with societal norms are rife throughout the book which, even as a male reader, I could appreciate and commiserate with. It was certainly an intriguing tale although perhaps not as good as some of the other work I have read from this author. Still a 4-star read for me for the story and the writing - 8/10.
May 20, 2024
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Restless Dolly Maunder is the story of Dolly, the author's grandmother, from the time she is a young girl to the end of her life. It recounts her childhood growing up poor and on a farm with no way out of the typical circle of a girl's life - live and work on her father's farm until she's married, when she'll go and live and work on her husband's farm. Clever Dolly devises a plan to get away from this circle of life, as her marriage proves to not be the same cage as living under her father's roof. She goes from the farm to owning a small store to a boarding house to a hotel. She makes her money and gets a sense of freedom but she's never satisfied with what she has.
This book was fine. I can see why it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, though I'm a little surprised it was shortlisted and would be very shocked indeed if it won. It's not really layered, everything is very surface level, you don't have to work at understanding this novel. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't a totally original story.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in historical fiction about the life of a woman living in Australia at the turn of the 20th century. It is an interesting book, but not, in my opinion, superb.
Rating: 3.5 / 5
The Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist Ranking
1. Brotherless Night
2. Enter Ghost
3. Restless Dolly Maunder
Restless Dolly Maunder is the story of Dolly, the author's grandmother, from the time she is a young girl to the end of her life. It recounts her childhood growing up poor and on a farm with no way out of the typical circle of a girl's life - live and work on her father's farm until she's married, when she'll go and live and work on her husband's farm. Clever Dolly devises a plan to get away from this circle of life, as her marriage proves to not be the same cage as living under her father's roof. She goes from the farm to owning a small store to a boarding house to a hotel. She makes her money and gets a sense of freedom but she's never satisfied with what she has.
This book was fine. I can see why it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, though I'm a little surprised it was shortlisted and would be very shocked indeed if it won. It's not really layered, everything is very surface level, you don't have to work at understanding this novel. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't a totally original story.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in historical fiction about the life of a woman living in Australia at the turn of the 20th century. It is an interesting book, but not, in my opinion, superb.
Rating: 3.5 / 5
The Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist Ranking
1. Brotherless Night
2. Enter Ghost
3. Restless Dolly Maunder
March 18, 2024
It wasn't long into reading this that I started thinking about my own Australian grandmother and Australian great-grandmother, who shared a time and some similarities with the fictional Dolly Mauder, based on Kate Grenville's own grandmother.
My grandmother even managed a couple of country town pubs as Dolly did and she rarely settled for long in one town or one place. She could also be pretty harsh and sometimes even nasty and inexplicable. But I did have a bit of a soft spot for her and my mother and I was there for her at the end of her life.
I really like that Kate Grenville, chooses to try to see this woman from her viewpoint and has her tell her own triumphs, struggle and regrets with the limitations her time and place put on her.
Another great Australian tale from Kate Grenville.
My grandmother even managed a couple of country town pubs as Dolly did and she rarely settled for long in one town or one place. She could also be pretty harsh and sometimes even nasty and inexplicable. But I did have a bit of a soft spot for her and my mother and I was there for her at the end of her life.
I really like that Kate Grenville, chooses to try to see this woman from her viewpoint and has her tell her own triumphs, struggle and regrets with the limitations her time and place put on her.
Another great Australian tale from Kate Grenville.
June 15, 2024
I have read a number of Kate Grenville’s books, most recently “A Room Made of Leaves.” I have seen her speak at writers’ festivals. She has contributed greatly to the fictionalized history of Australia. This book is the fictionalized account of Grenville’s grandmother.
My aged cohort, of which Grenville is a member, would have had grandmothers of the same ilk as Dolly. I am sure many readers of Grenville’s generation would have similar stories about their ancestors.
Both my grandmothers were, in different ways, similar to Dolly. My paternal grandmother had thirteen offspring. She was born in 1879 and lived for 88 years. Her alcoholic husband predeceased her by 43 years. She owned a corner store in Abermain, Cessnock. My maternal grandmother was a cook at the canteen at the DMR in Roseberry. Her husband died in 1948 and she was left to raise her children.
Molly Maunder was born in 1881. Grew up on a property at Currabubula. This book tells her life story. Her father’s cancelling her dreams of being a teacher, “over my dead body”. “Those iron rails” that restricted and determined a young woman’s life at the time, the few beaus she had before marrying Bert Russell.
Grenville’s depiction of daily life for country people, and especially women showed the toughness and grind of life 130 years ago.
The story explores many social mores and beliefs of the time. The narrative moves on relentlessly. Throughout Dolly’s life she reflects on her father’s statement when she asked if she could be a teacher: “Over my dead body.” Feminism is a leitmotif in the book, but Dolly is not an active feminist. She reflects on the restrictions on her own life but will readily impose her will on others. She is a strong woman of her time.
The book has a Miles Franklin or Ethel Turner feel. The flavours of Ruth Park can be tasted in Grenville’s words and phrases as she tells the reader of the life of Dolly. The towns and suburbs she lived in, the businesses she bought and sold. The schools her children attended, the vagaries of husband Bert. Dolly describes her relationship with husband Bert as a dog trot relationship.
It seems that prurient behaviour was as evident then as it is now, yet the social consequences were far more severe. Grenville creates situations where the protestant/catholic conflict arises. When I explain this concept to young students it is a great revelation to them.
Dolly reaches the pinnacle of her business achievements with the purchase of the Caledonia Hotel in 1927. That date was the signal that difficult times were about to strike. She and Bert become a victim of the depression. They lose the pub and are back on a farm.
The war arrives and her son Frank volunteers. Sadly, he doesn’t survive the war and Dolly is devastated. She never fully recovers from this loss.
Dolly’s relationship with her husband Bert is another recurring part of her life. Dolly was pressured into marrying him and Bert is philanderer, but Dolly stays with him for reasons she justifies to herself. This book is also a mirror to the times. However, eventually Bert evaporates from Dolly’s life. She then becomes a grandmother. She works at an arrange of jobs and lives with her daughter Nance, who is also Grenville’s mother and in an on and off relationship with Nance for several years.
An epiphany arrives when one day she asks her granddaughter Kate (who is the author) if she loves her grandmother. The child’s response is, “No” this is makes her realize that she would never win either mother or grandmother of the year award. She has been a restless person all her life and may be didn’t act in the interests of her children. Dolly reflects on the complexities and dimensions of love.
Grenville concludes her fine book by reflecting on the lives of women who were part of what I would call the federation generation, those who reached adulthood at the same time the states federated, and Australia became a nation. She reflects on the lives of these women and how limited their opportunities were and the strength of societal shackles on their lives. For all intents and purposes, these women could have been from another country compared to their grandchildren. In my youth I witnessed two women, my maternal and paternal grandmothers, who had aspects of Dolly’s life in their own lives.
I found this a most satisfying read. In this time of the mega rich and the celebrityhood it is rewarding to read of the common man, in this case, woman and how they lived their lives. I must go away and read One Life: My Mother’s Story.
My aged cohort, of which Grenville is a member, would have had grandmothers of the same ilk as Dolly. I am sure many readers of Grenville’s generation would have similar stories about their ancestors.
Both my grandmothers were, in different ways, similar to Dolly. My paternal grandmother had thirteen offspring. She was born in 1879 and lived for 88 years. Her alcoholic husband predeceased her by 43 years. She owned a corner store in Abermain, Cessnock. My maternal grandmother was a cook at the canteen at the DMR in Roseberry. Her husband died in 1948 and she was left to raise her children.
Molly Maunder was born in 1881. Grew up on a property at Currabubula. This book tells her life story. Her father’s cancelling her dreams of being a teacher, “over my dead body”. “Those iron rails” that restricted and determined a young woman’s life at the time, the few beaus she had before marrying Bert Russell.
Grenville’s depiction of daily life for country people, and especially women showed the toughness and grind of life 130 years ago.
The story explores many social mores and beliefs of the time. The narrative moves on relentlessly. Throughout Dolly’s life she reflects on her father’s statement when she asked if she could be a teacher: “Over my dead body.” Feminism is a leitmotif in the book, but Dolly is not an active feminist. She reflects on the restrictions on her own life but will readily impose her will on others. She is a strong woman of her time.
The book has a Miles Franklin or Ethel Turner feel. The flavours of Ruth Park can be tasted in Grenville’s words and phrases as she tells the reader of the life of Dolly. The towns and suburbs she lived in, the businesses she bought and sold. The schools her children attended, the vagaries of husband Bert. Dolly describes her relationship with husband Bert as a dog trot relationship.
It seems that prurient behaviour was as evident then as it is now, yet the social consequences were far more severe. Grenville creates situations where the protestant/catholic conflict arises. When I explain this concept to young students it is a great revelation to them.
Dolly reaches the pinnacle of her business achievements with the purchase of the Caledonia Hotel in 1927. That date was the signal that difficult times were about to strike. She and Bert become a victim of the depression. They lose the pub and are back on a farm.
The war arrives and her son Frank volunteers. Sadly, he doesn’t survive the war and Dolly is devastated. She never fully recovers from this loss.
Dolly’s relationship with her husband Bert is another recurring part of her life. Dolly was pressured into marrying him and Bert is philanderer, but Dolly stays with him for reasons she justifies to herself. This book is also a mirror to the times. However, eventually Bert evaporates from Dolly’s life. She then becomes a grandmother. She works at an arrange of jobs and lives with her daughter Nance, who is also Grenville’s mother and in an on and off relationship with Nance for several years.
An epiphany arrives when one day she asks her granddaughter Kate (who is the author) if she loves her grandmother. The child’s response is, “No” this is makes her realize that she would never win either mother or grandmother of the year award. She has been a restless person all her life and may be didn’t act in the interests of her children. Dolly reflects on the complexities and dimensions of love.
Grenville concludes her fine book by reflecting on the lives of women who were part of what I would call the federation generation, those who reached adulthood at the same time the states federated, and Australia became a nation. She reflects on the lives of these women and how limited their opportunities were and the strength of societal shackles on their lives. For all intents and purposes, these women could have been from another country compared to their grandchildren. In my youth I witnessed two women, my maternal and paternal grandmothers, who had aspects of Dolly’s life in their own lives.
I found this a most satisfying read. In this time of the mega rich and the celebrityhood it is rewarding to read of the common man, in this case, woman and how they lived their lives. I must go away and read One Life: My Mother’s Story.
December 13, 2023
Kate Grenville is an author I’ve wanted to read for years but never have, so I’m pleased to have finally had an opportunity to try one of her books. Restless Dolly Maunder is a short novel, inspired by the life of Grenville’s own maternal grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder (known to everyone as Dolly).
Dolly is born on a sheep farm in Currabubula, New South Wales in 1881, the sixth of seven children. Her older brothers and sisters can barely read and write, attending school only when their parents can spare them, but by the time Dolly reaches school-age, attendance has become compulsory. Dolly is a bright, intelligent girl and decides that she wants to continue her education and become a teacher after leaving school. Unfortunately, it’s not her decision to make – her father’s permission is required and he refuses to give it, saying that “over my dead body” will a daughter of his go out to work.
As the years go by, Dolly’s siblings begin to marry and move away, while Dolly herself stays on the farm with her parents, eventually marrying Bert Russell, an old friend from school who comes to work for her father. When Dolly discovers that her mother has been keeping a terrible secret from her, she decides that it’s time she and Bert started a new life somewhere else. Aware that farming leaves them at the mercy of the weather, they agree to try something completely different – running a little grocery shop in Wahroonga. It proves to be a success, but Dolly is still not satisfied…in fact, it seems that she’s never going to be satisfied, with anything.
The rest of the novel follows Dolly, Bert and their three children as they move around from place to place, from one business venture to another. Although I did initially have a lot of sympathy for Dolly and understood her desire to make something meaningful of her life, having had her dreams of becoming a teacher destroyed by her father, as the book went on I began to dislike her more and more. It seemed that she was only ever thinking of herself, giving no consideration at all to the effect on her children of constantly being uprooted and disrupted. She was a cold, unloving mother and although she was aware of her faults, she made no attempt to change.
Despite the unlikeable protagonist – and Grenville acknowledges herself in her author’s note that her grandmother was a difficult woman to love – I did enjoy this book. It was interesting to get some insights into life in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The family live through both World Wars and although the first leaves them largely untouched, by the time the second comes around Bert and Dolly have sons of fighting age, so are affected in a much more personal way. With this being my first experience of a Kate Grenville book, I didn’t know what to expect from her writing, but I found it very readable. She doesn’t use speech marks, which usually annoys me, but it didn’t bother me too much here, maybe because it’s not a particularly dialogue-heavy book. I’ll look forward to reading more of her work.
Dolly is born on a sheep farm in Currabubula, New South Wales in 1881, the sixth of seven children. Her older brothers and sisters can barely read and write, attending school only when their parents can spare them, but by the time Dolly reaches school-age, attendance has become compulsory. Dolly is a bright, intelligent girl and decides that she wants to continue her education and become a teacher after leaving school. Unfortunately, it’s not her decision to make – her father’s permission is required and he refuses to give it, saying that “over my dead body” will a daughter of his go out to work.
As the years go by, Dolly’s siblings begin to marry and move away, while Dolly herself stays on the farm with her parents, eventually marrying Bert Russell, an old friend from school who comes to work for her father. When Dolly discovers that her mother has been keeping a terrible secret from her, she decides that it’s time she and Bert started a new life somewhere else. Aware that farming leaves them at the mercy of the weather, they agree to try something completely different – running a little grocery shop in Wahroonga. It proves to be a success, but Dolly is still not satisfied…in fact, it seems that she’s never going to be satisfied, with anything.
The rest of the novel follows Dolly, Bert and their three children as they move around from place to place, from one business venture to another. Although I did initially have a lot of sympathy for Dolly and understood her desire to make something meaningful of her life, having had her dreams of becoming a teacher destroyed by her father, as the book went on I began to dislike her more and more. It seemed that she was only ever thinking of herself, giving no consideration at all to the effect on her children of constantly being uprooted and disrupted. She was a cold, unloving mother and although she was aware of her faults, she made no attempt to change.
Despite the unlikeable protagonist – and Grenville acknowledges herself in her author’s note that her grandmother was a difficult woman to love – I did enjoy this book. It was interesting to get some insights into life in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The family live through both World Wars and although the first leaves them largely untouched, by the time the second comes around Bert and Dolly have sons of fighting age, so are affected in a much more personal way. With this being my first experience of a Kate Grenville book, I didn’t know what to expect from her writing, but I found it very readable. She doesn’t use speech marks, which usually annoys me, but it didn’t bother me too much here, maybe because it’s not a particularly dialogue-heavy book. I’ll look forward to reading more of her work.
June 11, 2024
I’ve read some odd books lately (good, but odd). So I was really glad to dip into Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder, the fictionalised story of Kate’s grandmother, born in 1881 NSW into a poor farming family, a book that follows a normal sequence of time and events: a relief read. The story is about women, and touches on what women have had to endure in eras where our life choices have been (and still are, in many places) virtually non-existent. Fictionalised Dolly has a hard time expressing her feelings, and as a mother born into an entirely different timeline it was challenging to read her relationship with her children and see the impact of her harsh words sew their way, thread by dark thread, into their relationships. I do enjoy Kate Grenville’s books and admire her remarkable ability to imagine and articulate the intricacies of people’s lives. A nice book to sink into over winter.
June 7, 2024
Wow!!
An extremely powerful biography of the authors grandmother. Born in the 1880s, Dolly wanted a life outside of cooking, cleaning, and having babies. She wanted to experience life beyond what was expected of young girls.
She and her family, yes she got married and had children, moved around a lot and did everything from running farms, boarding houses and hotels. Dolly could never settle down for long before she would hanker for something different or some place different or both.
Living, like so many people did, through two world wars and the great depression, losing a son to the Pacific war, Dolly's story is one of courage, hope, and resilience.
It's a wonderful story, beautifully told.
An extremely powerful biography of the authors grandmother. Born in the 1880s, Dolly wanted a life outside of cooking, cleaning, and having babies. She wanted to experience life beyond what was expected of young girls.
She and her family, yes she got married and had children, moved around a lot and did everything from running farms, boarding houses and hotels. Dolly could never settle down for long before she would hanker for something different or some place different or both.
Living, like so many people did, through two world wars and the great depression, losing a son to the Pacific war, Dolly's story is one of courage, hope, and resilience.
It's a wonderful story, beautifully told.
April 4, 2024
3.5
This book starts out great. Scene set in 1880s rural Australia with verve and immersion. The unique voice of Dolly Maunder comes through with force. The book continues strong through Dolly's marriage, only to get bogged down and become repetitive in the recounting of her numerous (restless indeed!) business ventures, entailing moves to different part of Australia that are not particularly differentiated in the book (at least for the foreign reader, it's just a cavalcade of place names). Decades pass with this sort of meandering, and then the book pulls into tight focus again with the end of Dolly's life and the author's afterwords.
The book's weakness is that this is a "true story". A different dramatic arc might have sustained more narrative interest - but that wasn't Dolly's life. I waited in vain for more dramatic closure with Dolly's husband - but again, that's a novel, not real life. But the book's strength is also that Dolly was a real woman. The "slice of life" from the Australia of three generations ago is interesting enough that it will carry you through the repetitive points. Thought the audiobook narrator was great.
This book starts out great. Scene set in 1880s rural Australia with verve and immersion. The unique voice of Dolly Maunder comes through with force. The book continues strong through Dolly's marriage, only to get bogged down and become repetitive in the recounting of her numerous (restless indeed!) business ventures, entailing moves to different part of Australia that are not particularly differentiated in the book (at least for the foreign reader, it's just a cavalcade of place names). Decades pass with this sort of meandering, and then the book pulls into tight focus again with the end of Dolly's life and the author's afterwords.
The book's weakness is that this is a "true story". A different dramatic arc might have sustained more narrative interest - but that wasn't Dolly's life. I waited in vain for more dramatic closure with Dolly's husband - but again, that's a novel, not real life. But the book's strength is also that Dolly was a real woman. The "slice of life" from the Australia of three generations ago is interesting enough that it will carry you through the repetitive points. Thought the audiobook narrator was great.
April 21, 2024
I really like the idea of bringing to life the women from the ‘transitional era’, women born in the 1880’s (case in point, I didn’t even know there was a term for them), who Kate Grenville explains as women who have mostly vanished from the record, and exist in “stiff, unreal old studio photos”, but that these “silent, unrecorded women are where we come from”.
I really enjoyed this story. It’s not a complicated story. The form is not on the cutting edge of literature by any means. However, I felt very connected to Dolly Maunder and the history, and the story that was being told. I felt immersed in the time and place of the story. It’s brought me to a reflective state. Sometimes simple storytelling is good for just creating space for feelings and reflection, as opposed to the cerebral.
I really enjoyed this story. It’s not a complicated story. The form is not on the cutting edge of literature by any means. However, I felt very connected to Dolly Maunder and the history, and the story that was being told. I felt immersed in the time and place of the story. It’s brought me to a reflective state. Sometimes simple storytelling is good for just creating space for feelings and reflection, as opposed to the cerebral.
June 13, 2024
Restless Dolly Maunder was the last of the six books short-listed for the Women’s Prize that I read, and by far the most disappointing. It doesn’t seem of the same caliber as the others.
Kate Grenville has written a fictionalized account of her grandmother, Dolly Maunder, who was born in the Australian Outback in the late 1800s. Dolly was a woman who always felt there was something better for her and her family in the world, and wouldn’t be held back by the gender roles meant for women. Unfortunately, her independence and entrepreneurial sole didn’t leave much room in her life for love and compassion.
Kate Grenville has written a fictionalized account of her grandmother, Dolly Maunder, who was born in the Australian Outback in the late 1800s. Dolly was a woman who always felt there was something better for her and her family in the world, and wouldn’t be held back by the gender roles meant for women. Unfortunately, her independence and entrepreneurial sole didn’t leave much room in her life for love and compassion.
July 8, 2023
A historical Fiction Novel using the authors family memories of her grandmother who she didnt know very well.
The Restless Dolly Maunder is a beautifully written book that really draws you into how the lives of women in the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century actually lived through social life and the dominant men.
Women, like Dolly helped shape the world we know today and the reality of more control of their own lives and freedom.
Trigger warning p79 of child abuse
Thankyou to Better Reading for a preview copy of this novel. The Restless Dolly Maunder is due for publication in July (#BRPreview)
The Restless Dolly Maunder is a beautifully written book that really draws you into how the lives of women in the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century actually lived through social life and the dominant men.
Women, like Dolly helped shape the world we know today and the reality of more control of their own lives and freedom.
Trigger warning p79 of child abuse
Thankyou to Better Reading for a preview copy of this novel. The Restless Dolly Maunder is due for publication in July (#BRPreview)
March 25, 2024
A simple but powerful book that is easy to read but says a lot. It concentrates on women’s lives in the mid nineteenth to the twentieth century. What makes it more important and moving is that it is based on the true story of the author’s grandmother and mother. There is also a very moving chapter at the end mentioning the taking of land from the First Nations people. I think Kate Grenville must be the oldest person on the women’s prize list and I hope it makes the final. I’ve just read a fb review by a man who wonders why this has been chosen. Perhaps like Weyward it appeals more to women
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