Scan barcode
carleesi's review
I don’t have the wherewithal to keep watching as the meteor hurtles to earth. It’s just one shit thing after another, and the DV was so sudden and so gross it took me by surprise and made me scared to pick the book up again.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
4.0
‘Her first memories are fragments, scraps of fabric pieced together to make a whole.’
This novel starts with a letter from the Prison Comptroller to the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney. This letter, the inspiration for Ms Limprecht’s novel, advises the Hospital of the arrangements to be made for the admission of Rebecca Sinclair for the birth of her child. After the letter, in a prologue Rebecca’s admission to the hospital is described, and then her labour begins.
‘Tell him we have the upper hand and we could let the whole world know.’
With Chapter One, the novel returns to Rebecca’s childhood and the novel progresses chronologically. At this stage, I am hooked. Who is Rebecca Sinclair? Why is she in prison? And the baby? Slowly, the story unfolds. Rebecca lives with her widowed mother and sisters and they take in piece work in order to exist. Rebecca works hard, and then harder as her sisters leave home and her mother’s failing eyesight renders her incapable of finer needlework. Then, one day, she meets Donald Sinclair. Donald is the only son of Nurse Sinclair, an abortionist with a thriving trade in inner Sydney in the early twentieth century. Rebecca falls for Donald, but slowly becomes aware that he is not to be trusted. Donald likes money, but only the spending rather than the earning of it.
‘In this reflection she sees nothing of the girl with the blue silk, nothing of the young woman who read books and dreamt of finer things.’
Rebecca works with Donald’s mother for a while, but then Rebecca and Donald set up on their own. A woman dies, and Rebecca and Donald are charged with manslaughter. Rebecca’s story ends with her release from gaol.
Some novelizations of true stories do not work, sometimes the facts constrain the story. That wasn’t the case for me in this novel. I thought that Ms Limprecht imagined Rebecca’s life and challenges well. From the hardship faced by her mother, widowed with six children, to the role played by those willing to undertake abortions and the risks faced by those who underwent them, the story rang true for me. Perhaps Rebecca should have made different choices, certainly she seemed naïve and gullible at times. But what other options did she have? Leaving Donald had its own challenges.
‘The body, as we age, is like a map, she thinks – a map to read with my hands.’
I enjoyed this novel: it challenged me and made me think about some of the challenges of life for the poor, specifically for poor women, early last century.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
This novel starts with a letter from the Prison Comptroller to the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney. This letter, the inspiration for Ms Limprecht’s novel, advises the Hospital of the arrangements to be made for the admission of Rebecca Sinclair for the birth of her child. After the letter, in a prologue Rebecca’s admission to the hospital is described, and then her labour begins.
‘Tell him we have the upper hand and we could let the whole world know.’
With Chapter One, the novel returns to Rebecca’s childhood and the novel progresses chronologically. At this stage, I am hooked. Who is Rebecca Sinclair? Why is she in prison? And the baby? Slowly, the story unfolds. Rebecca lives with her widowed mother and sisters and they take in piece work in order to exist. Rebecca works hard, and then harder as her sisters leave home and her mother’s failing eyesight renders her incapable of finer needlework. Then, one day, she meets Donald Sinclair. Donald is the only son of Nurse Sinclair, an abortionist with a thriving trade in inner Sydney in the early twentieth century. Rebecca falls for Donald, but slowly becomes aware that he is not to be trusted. Donald likes money, but only the spending rather than the earning of it.
‘In this reflection she sees nothing of the girl with the blue silk, nothing of the young woman who read books and dreamt of finer things.’
Rebecca works with Donald’s mother for a while, but then Rebecca and Donald set up on their own. A woman dies, and Rebecca and Donald are charged with manslaughter. Rebecca’s story ends with her release from gaol.
Some novelizations of true stories do not work, sometimes the facts constrain the story. That wasn’t the case for me in this novel. I thought that Ms Limprecht imagined Rebecca’s life and challenges well. From the hardship faced by her mother, widowed with six children, to the role played by those willing to undertake abortions and the risks faced by those who underwent them, the story rang true for me. Perhaps Rebecca should have made different choices, certainly she seemed naïve and gullible at times. But what other options did she have? Leaving Donald had its own challenges.
‘The body, as we age, is like a map, she thinks – a map to read with my hands.’
I enjoyed this novel: it challenged me and made me think about some of the challenges of life for the poor, specifically for poor women, early last century.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
shelleyrae's review
3.0
Drawing on official documents and extensive general research into the period, author Eleanor Limprecht blends fact and imagination to create a convincing narrative that tells the story of a woman forgotten by history in her novel, 'Long Bay'.
Born in Paddington, New South Wales in 1885, Rebecca Sinclair was the fourth of six children, raised by her mother who was widowed when Rebecca was two. She married at nineteen, birthed a daughter, and four years later, alongside her husband, was convicted of manslaughter for the death of a mother of three who died after an abortion procedure performed by Rebecca went wrong. Rebecca was sentenced to three years hard labour in Long Bay and while imprisoned, Rebecca birthed her second daughter.
Limprecht builds on these known details of Rebecca's life with her imagination, informed by research, creating a story that depicts a childhood of poverty, a marriage marred by bigamy and violence and the events that led up to the tragic event that resulted in her being jailed. Long Bay illustrates an era where women had limited control over their lives and often struggled under the weight of deprivation and hardship.
There is no doubt that Rebecca's story is fascinating and I was intrigued by the details of her life, but the writing is often quite dry and unsentimental, lacking the emotion that could have breathed more vitality into the narrative. Yet the story is rich in period detail, evoking the city landscape and era well.
A thoughtful and readable novel, I did enjoy Long Bay. I feel it is a story that will interest readers of both historical fiction and non fiction, especially those curious about women's lives and issues at the turn of the century.
lisa_setepenre's review
3.0
A botched abortion landed Rebecca Sinclair in the women's prison at Long Bay. But what lead Rebecca there? In Long Bay, author Eleanor Limprecht recreates Rebecca's life and trials, depicting her journey to prison and her journey out.
Long Bay was a bit of a middling read for me. It was neither wholly bad – though there were some flaws – nor a breathtakingly excellent read.
Limprecht's writing is strong and lyrical, to the point where I often didn't mind that a lot of the novel is expositional, scenes made up of description and summary as opposed to scenes with dialogue and action. The novel flowed well, one page often leading into the next.
I also found the issues and themes highlighted by this novel to be worthy of attention and enjoyed how Limprecht handled them.
On the downside, a lot of the novel is, as I've said, exposition, and while it wasn't necessarily a dull read because of it, there were times when it did show stress. Writers are often told to "show, not tell" and I feel as though Long Bay suffers from this. Limprecht has Rebecca going through an arc to become more reckless, but rather than giving the narrative the space to show this vast shift in her personality, we get a line that reads (more or less), "she decides to be reckless" and then bam, she's reckless. It feels utterly alien to her character and there's no real development to make that shift feel natural.
Furthermore, Long Bay felt a bit emotionless. I did feel frustrated with the men in this story, but I rarely felt invested in Rebecca's story. I rarely felt her emotions. At times, it meant that the character of Rebecca felt weak and easily swayed.
I didn't dislike Long Bay, but I don't find a lot that I explicitly like about it either.
Long Bay was a bit of a middling read for me. It was neither wholly bad – though there were some flaws – nor a breathtakingly excellent read.
Limprecht's writing is strong and lyrical, to the point where I often didn't mind that a lot of the novel is expositional, scenes made up of description and summary as opposed to scenes with dialogue and action. The novel flowed well, one page often leading into the next.
I also found the issues and themes highlighted by this novel to be worthy of attention and enjoyed how Limprecht handled them.
On the downside, a lot of the novel is, as I've said, exposition, and while it wasn't necessarily a dull read because of it, there were times when it did show stress. Writers are often told to "show, not tell" and I feel as though Long Bay suffers from this. Limprecht has Rebecca going through an arc to become more reckless, but rather than giving the narrative the space to show this vast shift in her personality, we get a line that reads (more or less), "she decides to be reckless" and then bam, she's reckless. It feels utterly alien to her character and there's no real development to make that shift feel natural.
Furthermore, Long Bay felt a bit emotionless. I did feel frustrated with the men in this story, but I rarely felt invested in Rebecca's story. I rarely felt her emotions. At times, it meant that the character of Rebecca felt weak and easily swayed.
I didn't dislike Long Bay, but I don't find a lot that I explicitly like about it either.
wtb_michael's review
3.0
A fascinating book, but one that didn't quite work as a novel for me. Something about it felt very much like the thinly fictionalised historical story that it is - it was caught halfway between being a novel and being straight-up history, and it wound up falling a bit short on both sides. It's a heart-breaking and brilliantly researched story, and is probably worth your time just from that perspective, but I never found myself getting properly caught up in the characters in the way that I wanted to.
More...