A review by katiealex72
Poor Man's Orange by Ruth Park

5.0

Poor Man’s Orange covers the same themes as The Harp in the South…extreme poverty in Sydney’s post-war slums, adolescence, violent crime, gender roles in a poor working class Catholic family, illness and death. The book is darker though, with more cohesion between chapters, in contrast to THITS which was serialised and published in separate chapters. In some ways it’s almost a rewriting of the first book with similar things happening to Dolour that happened to Roie earlier, but it’s better. The transformation of Dolour from awkward, sick teenager to a grown woman whose integrity and inner (and outer) strength shines like a star in her grim environment is highly satisfying. (Did she have trachoma? I can’t find anything on the internet about it but it seems to fit). Where Roie crumples helplessly, Dolour fights back instinctively. The scene where she shoves the Kidger out of the shop with a mop handle is a beautiful thing. Hughie is a less sympathetic character here as well. In the first book he was a loveable, flawed buffoon, but in this book you just want to kick him for the pain he inflicts on his whole family. In the end it’s clear that the house on 12 1/2 Plymouth Street won’t be around much longer, and the younger members of the family are going to move to the bush. There’s not much optimism there for Mumma and Hughie but I think that Dolour, Charlie and the kids will make it.