The Paperbark Shoe is the debut novel of Goldie Goldbloom, and I’ve had it on my TBR since shortly after it was released in 2010. This was the blurb that enticed me to buy it:

This is the unforgettable story of the Toads of Cemetery Road. Theirs is a marriage of convenience: Gin to escape a mental institution, Toad to escape the censure of a country community. The arrival of two Italian POWs on their farm brings music, sensuality and a love that will fan the flames of small-town bigotry.

But other books kept getting in the way and so when I saw the title as an audio book in the library, I borrowed it, and have spent the last fortnight’s commute fascinated by the story.

This is a character-driven novel. Gin (Virginia) and Toad are a mismatched couple indeed. She, an albino traumatised by events I won’t reveal, was in a mental hospital when the opportunist Toad proposed to her. It was her chance to get out of there, and his to find anyone willing to marry him. A white knight he is not…

The Toads live in a remote place called Wyalkatchem in Western Australia, on a not-very-successful farm. They are isolated by their poverty, their individual strangeness and their strangeness as a couple. Gin in particular is the subject of suspicion, superstition and overt abuse from the locals, while Toad is an object of fun because of his grotesque appearance, unappealing personal habits and his collection of vintage ladies corsets.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2012/03/09/the-paperbark-shoe-by-goldie-goldbloom-read-... ( )

The distinct voices of Goldbloom's work sucked me in the beginning, and I read the first third or so of the work in one sitting. Once the unique flavor of the voice wore off some, however, I grew less and less engaged with the work. The premise was interesting, and I was fascinated with the history behind the work, but the characters were (for the most part) simply unlikable. While I could sympathize with their situations, I still couldn't bring myself to care about the circumstances that they had, for the most part, brought upon themselves. And while I cared about the prisoners who were at the forefront of Goldbloom's ideas, their characters were superficial enough that they never felt entirely real in anything but their effect on Goldbloom's focus characters. In the last third of the book, I found myself reading simply to finish, having long ago been able to predict the trajectory of the novel's conclusion and characters.

In the end, I'm afraid this isn't a book I'm likely to recommend. Goldbloom's experiments in narrative voice were discombobulating and difficult to navigate in the midst of an otherwise traditional narrative, and the book as a whole was predictable once it got going. As fascinating as the Idea of the novel was...I'm afraid that it just wasn't enough. ( )

A beautifully descriptive book filled with very odd and largely unlikeable characters - the main character is Gin Toad, an albino woman married to a man who met her in an insane asylum. Gin is cultured, plays piano to the highest level and is from a privileged background - yet circumstances have led to her living a life of poverty and backbreaking hard work on a property in Western Australia with her husband (closet homosexual and ladies corset collector) Mr Toad. Into this environment are brought two Italian prisonersof-war - their effect on the Toad family forms the focus of the novel. ( )

Virginia Boyle (Gin Toad), an albino and classically trained pianist, marries Agrippa Toad, a farmer and sheep rancher. On their remote farm in western Australia, they are joined by Antonio and John, two of the 18,000 Italian prisoners-of-war sent to Australia between 1941 and 1947 and used to alleviate the labour shortage on isolated farms. What ensues is an “unholy entanglement of John and Toad, Antonio and [Gin].”

This is definitely a novel of characters and relationships. Gin and Toad are complete opposites. She is well-educated and cultured whereas he is an uncouth “cinaedus” who lacks “even the basics of an elementary education.” What brought them together “wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t love.” Gin saw Toad as her rescuer from her incarceration in a mental institution. She says, “It wasn’t good, what Toad and I had, but at least we were in it together, yoked together like mismatched beasts pulling a plough.” They are both outcasts of society, she because of her albinism, and he because of his stunted physical appearance and sexual proclivities.

One can have sympathy for Gin, the narrator, because she has not had an easy life. She has experienced constant rejection and has an emotionally unfulfilling marriage, so is desperate for acceptance and love. Her life is one of grinding poverty in virtual isolation. When she does encounter others, they invariably treat her as an object of mockery and superstition because people are trained from an early age “to hate the things that are different.” She has also lost much and “loss doesn’t end” so the reader can understand her cynicism and bitterness.

However, empathy for Gin is difficult to maintain because she is not a likeable person. She is very selfish and her treatment of her children is hard to forgive. At best she is a reluctant mother raising feral children whom she would abandon without a second thought. One of Gin’s neighbours says, “’I know you never wanted none of your kids, Gin, except maybe that first one, the ghosty one like you.’” Despite the mistreatment she has received because of her condition, she wants only albino children? When someone else experiences loss, she thinks only of herself, and so is told, “’You are a stone fortress, not a person. When you opened your gates, it was not to surrender to me, but to capture me. Do not call this love.’”

All of the characters are damaged. Gin and Toad are metaphorical prisoners, but Antonio and John are literal prisoners and objects of suspicion. Toad can be very cruel, John is untrustworthy, Antonio is manipulative, and even the children are sly. The people in the nearby, very insular community are close-minded and hateful as befits Gin’s description of them: “God made the land and men made the cities but the devil made small country towns.”

It is Gin’s relationship with the exotic Antonio that receives the most attention. He seems to be everything Toad is not and gives Gin the attention that she doesn’t receive from her husband. He tells her, “’You are like the Venus . . . like the Maria in the church, smooth white marble, perfect. There is nothing more beautiful.’” He sings opera with her and offers to help her with her chores, even “spending hours with [her] in the hot laundry shed.” The question is whether Antonio really loves her, or is he living in a fantasy world to make his life in exile more bearable, or is he a lothario who considers Gin just a gingilla.

Goldbloom excels at descriptions of the landscape. It is obvious that she is familiar with the setting. The outback is arid and desolate and possesses cruel indifference, capricious weather, and many hidden dangers. In many ways it can be seen as a metaphor for the war.

Unfortunately, at times the amount of sensory detail is almost overwhelming: “in the damp, hidden places, rise the wildflowers of the wheatbelt: the blue fairy orchid, the flame grevillea, fields of pink everlastings, the yellow hakea and the sandpaper wattle, the praying virgin orchid and the strange bloom of the warty hammer orchid. The labellum of this flower is brown and speckled like the abdomen of the thynnid wasp.” When describing milking cows, the author goes on and on: “One cow releases a flood of urine . . . and the others step daintily through the liquid, shine their splayed hooves in it. The children sweep the puddle into the gutter with their bare feet. . . .[The cows] press forward to eat the small pile of grain before them. Their long mauve tongues stretch out endlessly, wetly, prehensile. In the low slanting light of dawn, the great swathes of spider web bunched from the beams glow golden and luxurious. The fly tapes twisting over the cows’ backs seem like black lingerie, the cows warm and fertile, the splash of manure in the gutter smelling of the summer grass. . . . they settle to chewing, muffled as dawn on a foggy morning, with the eyes of the bull on their rear ends. . . . Toad tilts the bucket on his boot, milks swiftly with Clydesdale fingers . . . The girl child, the small boy, their father and I, milk. Silence.” Of course being able to describe milking in such lyrical language is commendable.

The book was interesting for shedding light on a part of World War II about which I knew little. I was unaware that Italian prisoners were used as manpower on Australian farms. I also did not know about the events at Sant’Anna during World War II. If I had known about this historical event, my emotions while reading this book would have been quite different.

The book is not a light read since its themes include war, bigotry, loss, isolation, and survival. ( )

Jenny was late picking a book, she was in Dymocks and this one caught her eye it had a good picture of an Australian veranda on the front. She read the first few pages and liked it. There were vivid descriptions and it was interesting. Didn’t enjoy a couple of the sex scenes. Had to suspend belief a bit. The author chose two extreme people to show Aussie intolerance. Great read, couldn’t put it down.
Others:
Reminded me of Peter Carey’s writing.
P.C’s characters are more believable.
Some of G.G’s a bit far fetched!
Found it a bit insulting to Australians.
Think it is very true to country life and people at that time.
Perhaps Gin didn’t go to Italy and it was all part of her mind deteriorating.
I’m sure she went.
Couldn’t put it down, great descriptions.
Terrific sentences worth quoting.
Exquisite prose captured how it was to be different.
It was too extreme, even the names.

Scores out of 10:
8,7,9,8,7,8,8,9,8,9,6 = 7.9