THE JACARANDA HOUSE by Deborah Challinor

I really do dislike writing a negative-ish review, because I know how much effort, research, love, time and heartache goes into writing and publishing a book, but for me, this is definitely not Deborah Challinor's best work. It feels rushed, at times glib, stereotyped in its characters and not all together believable, too many themes, and worst of all predictable. Which is a shame because the issues she tackles are important, the story line is believable and has probably happened, and a couple of the characters are superb.

We are in Kings Cross, Sydney in the 1960s - what a complete den of iniquity this slice of Sydney was back then. I really liked the descriptions of the Cross - it's depravity, seediness, the larger than life characters many based on real people, the dirt and grittiness of it all. Polly Manaia, who featured in an earlier novel of Challinor's,  had fled Auckland some years previously, leaving her now 11 year old daughter in the care  her mother with whom she has a shocking relationship, the reasons for which are revealed towards the end of the book. She is working as an exotic dancer in a strip club, has been for some time, managing her existence with alcohol, uppers and downers. She lives with two transgender performers stalwarts of that Cross institution Les Girls, Rhoda and Star who are the stand out characters in this story. Rhoda and Star both have their own sad back stories, which are lightly touched upon, and I would so like to have known more about them. Actually this was the greatest fault of the book - so much briefly alluded to, so many interesting characters and back stories, that would have made the whole book so much more worthwhile and profound to read.

Polly decides she wants to bring her daughter Gina to live with her. The process she goes through to achieve this I found almost ridiculous - a myriad of plane journeys, subterfuge and deception back in Auckland involving her long suffering brother, a Beatles concert, deceiving her daughter and mother, all the time under the influence of her drug regimen. I also could not really marry her job as an exotic dancer living in a tiny and grim flat with all the accumulated savings she had to finance her trip and setting Gina up in Sydney with her. I digress.

Gina is a delight, a breath of beautiful fresh air into the flat the three of them live in. Are all 11 year olds so capable, so forgiving, so unscarred by her circumstances of life, so articulate, so perfect - I doubt it.  But she is still a lovely character, Actually the fact that Polly is able to function at all is due entirely to her living with Rhoda and Star, and her best friend who is a prostitute - again I couldn't get how a woman with so many brains, common sense and dare I say it what looks like good self esteem, was working as prostitute when she clearly has the potential to be so much more.

Bad sad things happen before the good starts to happen, and there are some crazy scenes too. A visit to a psychic who was a real person in the Cross at this time was just plain ridiculous, and the visit by Polly's mother was almost comedic, again with little depth and perception for the character and her role in the story. This book could have been so much more than it is, but I did love reading about Kings Cross in the1960s.