Not engaging. DNF ( )

(8.5) I was unfamiliar with the opening scene in this book i.e. the tobacco farms in Motueka ,near Nelson. So I did some reading about it on completion of the book. War widow, Irene, leaves the safety of her parent's home with her 6 year old daughter Jessie. In Motueka, she meets two men who will change the course of her life. She marries Jock Pawson and has three more children.
The book follows these three children Belinda, Grant and Janice, through the years. We see the changing social policies of New Zealand and the impacts on individuals, especially the women. This is one of this authors favourite themes, the evolving role of women in New Zealand.
I very much enjoyed this novel. Once again, a satisfying read from this author. ( )

The story begins in 1952 and the 14 chapters span 55 years of family and social history. Struggling war widow Irene and her young daughter move to Motueka in the South Island of New Zealand to work the tobacco fields. The intergenerational family stories of Irene and her four children, Jessie, Belinda, Grant and Janice, unfold against an historical narrative which includes the Watersiders’ Strike (1951), the death of Prime Minister Norman Kirk (1974), Ruth Richardson's ‘Mother of All Budgets’ (1991), the United Women’s Convention (1975), Springbok tour (1981) and nuclear-free policy (1984). A very well written family narrative and social history. ( )

I love it when this happens: I started reading All Day at the Movies last night at about nine o’clock, fell asleep very late at night with the book over my nose, and didn’t get out of bed this morning till I finished the book at about eleven. It wasn’t that the novel is a page-turner; it was more that it was so utterly absorbing that I just didn’t want to put it aside.

Fiona Kidman DNZM OBE (b. 1940) is a prolific New Zealand novelist, poet, scriptwriter and short story author. She’s written more novels than are listed at her Wikipedia page, because (on the day I looked) the list doesn’t include The Infinite Air (2013, see my review) or this latest novel, All Day at the Movies (2016). With the possible exception of The Captive Wife (2005, which I loved but have not reviewed on this blog) I think it may be her best yet.

Beginning in the brutally conservative 1950s, the novel is constructed as a chain of interconnected stories, tracing the fortunes and secrets of a New Zealand family. Far from being the ‘golden age’ so often associated with the postwar period, this era was a difficult one for women. For Irene Sandle, widowed in the last year of the war, her only solace is the child born from Andrew’s last leave, but she lost a satisfying job at the library because in the 1950s there was no such thing as maternity leave.

When she went back to ask for her position after the birth, it had been filled. The land girls who had worked in the countryside came flocking after jobs in town. She did have a war widow’s pension after all, and a roof over her head, the head librarian explained. It wouldn’t be fair to take her back. That wasn’t exactly the point, because the roof was over her parents’ house. For a time that was all right, but it wasn’t any more. (p.18)

Chafing for freedom that she can’t have under her parents’ roof, Irene takes little Jessie with her to Motueka, where she finds work as a manual labourer on a tobacco farm. To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/10/07/all-day-at-the-movies-by-fiona-kidman/