The Telling Time

P J McKay

Paloko Press

ISBN: 9780473520113

Description:

A captivating debut novel of impossible love and soul-destroying secrets. Two young women, mother and daughter, fight to overcome adversity while transporting the reader from Yugoslavia in the late 1950s, to New Zealand’s “Dally” suburbia, and then back in the late 1980s to a now-splintering Yugoslavia.

WHEN SECRETS DEMAND TO BE TOLD . . .
Two young women, a generation apart, travel to opposite sides of the world on fraught journeys of self-discovery.
1958: Gabrijela yearns to escape the confines of bleak post-war Yugoslavia and her tiny fishing community, but never imagines she will be exiled to New Zealand — a new immigrant sent to housekeep for the mysterious and surly Roko, clutching a secret she dare not reveal.
1989: Luisa, Gabrijela’s daughter, departs on her own covert quest, determined to unpick the family’s past. But not all decisions are equal and amid Yugoslavia’s brewing civil unrest, Luisa’s journey confronts her with culture shocks and dark encounters of her own.

My View:

Pick up this book – you will not regret it -a captivating narrative of migration, culture, feminism and family. This book packs a unexpected punch.

Two stories are slowly unpicked- mother’s and daughter’s, this dual time line is fascinating and intriguing. As a migrant, as a woman, as a daughter, and as a traveler I can relate to so many of the ,elements discussed in this book. Australia in the 1960’s was very similar to New Zealand in this same time period, so much change; migration, the melding of cultures and the early signs of the beginning of the feminist movement.

But the story in Yugoslavia is just as capitating and meaningful.

Sit back and take this arm chair ride to unfamiliar places and discover a landscape so different to your own – physically, economically and politically. This is no cozy read, it delivers a gut wrenching punch.

A great read leaves you wanting more, I wanted to know about the lives of the 2 protagonists.