The earth smelt strong to Matilda and full of things growing and dying
all at the same time. She thought about the grey-green tangled bush at the end
of her street, full of cowboys and Red Indians, waiting with their guns and
their bows and arrows. She thought about the Japs and the Germans and the
shining sword and chocolate biscuits, and the Argonauts sailing across the
ocean, and the silver trail of snails on cardboard. She thought about the
princess in the film, 'How do you do, so glad you could come, how do you do'
and the wonderful butterfly bathroom and poor little Karen and her beautiful
red shoes. She thought about the sad smiling man with his chess set and the
newsreel and her tennis ball, up and up and up in the air, high as the tallest
tree in the Basin, and Uncle Paul with his hands in his pockets, and her
mother's red shoe falling down down down into the deep green bush for ever.
Funny, tough-minded and tender, this is the
story of Matilda and her two sisters growing up in Sydney in the 1950s at the
time of the Petrov Affair. Punctuated by the headlines of the time, it shows
with unsettling clarity how the large events of the world can impinge on
ordinary lives.