Touted as a powerful, personal novel about women, children and justice, this book is not so much a polemic against domestic violence, as a gentle story about a family, with a message, and a not-so-gentle conclusion.

It is peopled with authentic characters. We meet Joe, 11, always getting into trouble at the Catholic school he and his older sister, Ruby, attend. She is a prize student, and well behaved, earning a holiday on a farm as a reward. Then there is their mother, Marion, separated from their father, and her sister, Oona, living with a boyfriend whom Marion distrusts.

The women’s father, Charlie, is a delightful character. A former street-sweeper, and a collector of everything. Charlie is a wondrous, wise influence on Joe. Talking to him about religion, Hell, and school, and enlisting him to help sort his collected items. Then Oona comes to visit, obviously having been beaten by her boyfriend. Despite concern from her sister and father, Oona is determined to return to her boyfriend as her bruises fade. Birch paints an authentic picture of the parish priest, who refuses to help because Oona is ‘living in sin’.

When Marion and Charlie talk about Oona’s predicament, Charlie confesses that his father was a wife-beater and, just once, Charlie was tempted to hit his own late wife, realising that when he had listened to the beatings as a boy, his father was teaching him to be a man.

The domestic violence theme is subtle, just as the solution by Charlie and his friend Ranji is a surprising and subtle end to Women & Children of one family’s experience with domestic violence.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tony Birch is the author of four novels, five short fiction collections, and two poetry books.

In 2022 his book, Dark As Last Night was awarded the Christina Stead Literary Prize and the Steele Rudd Literary Award. The book was also shortlisted for the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction.

His most recent book is the novel, Women and Children, (UQP 2023).