| Madonna of the Eucalypts
Karen Sparnon
(Text Publishing)
Judges report
This is an interesting work of fiction with a lot of drama, melodrama and some suspense. The author achieves an excellent balance between the best of Italian tradition regarding 19th-century trans-oceanic migration, popular stories (see, for example, the famous song 'Mamma mia dammi cento lire') and fairy-tales, set always against a very strong religious background. In fact, the entire concept underlining the plot concerns the mysterious ways in which divine providence operates. It is about drama and destiny, how, at the end, after the most dangerous and troublesome journey, humans reach 'home'.
The novel is firmly based in historical fact - there is indeed a church on the Aeolian island of Salina called Madonna del Terzito. However, no Australian copy was erected - the statue of the Madonna was not brought to Mildura, as this novel describes, but in 1929 to the Sydney suburb of Gladesville. There are other minor blemishes, such as the supposition that Italian playing cards are the same as the English, but the novel rises above such pedantry. It tells a providential story in the style of Manzoni, and its characters have real depth. Delfina astounds us with her combination of passivity and determination.
Madonna of the Eucalypts astonishes us with its accurate descriptions of both the sea-girted Aeolian islands, never quite so well described in the English language, and the desert country around Mildura, the land of the block farms. The figures of the characters carry these two landscapes in their everyday walking, dreaming and talking. This is a signal fictional achievement. |
