From the supremely talented Boyd family. The first in the Langton Quartet I read these books in high school and am revisiting them nearly 40 years later. The first is the story of Alice, grandmother to the fictional author and tells of her family's peripatetic lives. It is also an interesting look at early Melbourne. Loved the books in 1980, loved this now and will go on to read the rest in the series. ( )

Stumbles a bit at the start, but the conceit--our narrator is convinced to tell the story of his family as mediated by his grandmother's diaries--is a very nice one, and once we get into the family story, the awkward flaws fall away. Then you're left with Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead style), or the early volumes of Powell's 'Dance to the Music of Time,' only in Australia.

"Austin understood much better le plaisir aristocratique which consists not as his guest had imagined in rudeness to someone whom it is safe to snub, but in a confidence so complete in one's own values that one affirms them clearly, indifferent to the fact that they are incompatible with the ideas of a bourgeois society, and the pleasure consists in seeing the bewilderment of a conventional mind, when faced with an idea too generous, or a taste too eclectic or even an honesty too obvious for its comprehension." ( )

This is the story of Alice Verso told through her grandson's discovery of her diary. From its pages half written in French he is able to uncover generations of intricate and complicated relationships. Alice marries into the Langton family and brings the clan financial stability. But, despite this Alice discovers her husband is having an affair with a childhood friend named Hetty. Told across three generations and bouncing between Australia and England everything about this story was strange. As a reader, I couldn't stay engaged with the story or the characters. There wasn't a single person I connected with or cared about. It was the kind of story I often lost place with - meaning, when I put it down I couldn't remember the last thing I read. ( )