Reviews

Bridie's Fire by Kirsty Murray

jade_courtney's review against another edition

4.0

This was such a heartfelt read. It was also really interesting and I loved the history to it.

halleschroor's review

3.0

The pacing of this book was all over the place but it was still pretty good.

stefhyena's review

4.0

This was a really good book. I wasn't so keen on the portrayal of the theatre people's relationships but up until then I had thought Murray had done very well to balance horrors and devastation with moments of hope and the relationships that feed survival. The complexity of loyalty and an individual journey I thought were well plotted. Love was real but threatened by reality. Awful choices had to be made and people were scarred by their choices.

It was also good that the book did not attempt to be apolitical or to individualise the suffering of the characters. There were systems of injustice that made this unnecessary famine and the book was upfront about that. The book also tried to honestly and respectfully portray the diversity of the people who made up early Australia instead of working under a homogenised whiteness. Questions of class and gender and the delights and limitations of relationships across all these groups of difference were kept complex, when it is so easy to write a feel-good version where none of that matters.

I will be interested at some point to read the others in the series.