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A review by hazeyjane_2
Poor Man's Orange by Ruth Park
5.0
Once more Ruth Park has outdone herself. Her prose is magical, and as smooth as cream in this sequel to The Harp in the South, which is about the continuing existence of the Darcy family and their neighbours in the nineteenth-century tenements of Surry Hills. Poor Man’s Orange is bursting with detail, evocative, rich in imagery.
This is as much a tragedy, and a novel about poverty, squalor, spirituality and change, as it is a bildungsroman. Most of it is from sixteen-year-old Dolour’s perspective (there are shades of A Little Princess in Dolour’s delicious imaginings of the filth, sordidness and disorder around her transforming into untold luxury), but we get a good look at the whole ensemble from THITS - drunkard Hughie Darcy and his wife, ‘Mumma’, calm, practical Charlie Rothe, dreamy Roie. And of course, the colourful and often insistently multicultural cast of neighbours, from benevolent old Lick Jimmy to the Sicilianos. They might verge on stereotypes, but they are strangely charming for all that, and although Park’s non-white characters are less three-dimensional than her white ones, they are not spared the keenness of her observation, her sense for character development, her ruthless ‘chronicling’ of their sins, or the subtlety and sympathy she evokes so beautifully. Her characters are far from saints.
Her character development is ample in this novel, and each character is given time to make mistakes. Like its predecessor, PMO is a slow paced novel, gliding from perspective to perspective with ease. It’s a slice of life book worth its salt.
The love story is none too subtle, but Park wafts it toward you as beautifully as incense, so that you don’t mind the ending not being quite as you expected.
The only sour notes are the racism and ableism.
This is as much a tragedy, and a novel about poverty, squalor, spirituality and change, as it is a bildungsroman. Most of it is from sixteen-year-old Dolour’s perspective (there are shades of A Little Princess in Dolour’s delicious imaginings of the filth, sordidness and disorder around her transforming into untold luxury), but we get a good look at the whole ensemble from THITS - drunkard Hughie Darcy and his wife, ‘Mumma’, calm, practical Charlie Rothe, dreamy Roie. And of course, the colourful and often insistently multicultural cast of neighbours, from benevolent old Lick Jimmy to the Sicilianos. They might verge on stereotypes, but they are strangely charming for all that, and although Park’s non-white characters are less three-dimensional than her white ones, they are not spared the keenness of her observation, her sense for character development, her ruthless ‘chronicling’ of their sins, or the subtlety and sympathy she evokes so beautifully. Her characters are far from saints.
Her character development is ample in this novel, and each character is given time to make mistakes. Like its predecessor, PMO is a slow paced novel, gliding from perspective to perspective with ease. It’s a slice of life book worth its salt.
The love story is none too subtle, but Park wafts it toward you as beautifully as incense, so that you don’t mind the ending not being quite as you expected.
The only sour notes are the racism and ableism.