I am very interested in Carys Harding- Browne as I was named after her by my mother who taught her at Wilderness School when she was 14 or 15 years old. I have found Carys' writing style mature and insightful. I wish my mother was still alive so she could read it. Margaret Kiek was my mother's maiden name and she was an English teacher, writer and poet. I believe she taught at Wilderness in 1936 and 1937.
I am thrilled that Ann Barson has published this gem.
Carys Penny

CARYS
Diary of a young girl, Adelaide 1940-42
Edited by Ann Barson, published by ETT imprint, Sydney, 2018

What a good read Carys’s diaries turned out to be. At first I dipped in with delight at their freshness but never thought they would make a compelling read from cover to cover. How wrong that proved. When I started at the beginning, I immediately realised the collection was a page turner. Her girlish preoccupations with clothes and boys did not blunt the strong and compelling narrative which evolved as the seventeen year-old grew into a perceptive woman of nineteen, increasingly aware as she described Adelaide life in the years from 1940-42.

Carefree times early in the war, and romantic notions of nationalism and heroism, were soon swamped by an awareness of war’s horrors. Its realities, no longer abstract, splintered Carys’s social group as separations, casualties and deaths touched her family and the friends she loved.

Nonetheless the strong life force of this irrepressible girl shone through the pages of lyrical, lucid and graceful writing,

Her talk about myriad affairs, amid drinking, wild parties, films and dances, was scattered with revelations of her developing interest in one particular man, creating tension and holding the reader in suspense.

Somehow, in spite of her preoccupation with cocktails, hairstyles and fashions, the young girl absorbed a wide and eclectic range of reading as she visited libraries and went to lectures to allay her disappointment at not being able to go to university. Diary details reveal perceptive responses to books, music, theatre and films, and her increasing understanding of the political context of the times. In the background, intellectual theories and vigorous conversations abounded in the circles of young people to whom she gravitated.

As editor, Ann Barson has rigorously and honestly retained the integrity of her mother’s writings. In addition, she underpinned their poignancy by researching the fates of many of the young men and women who featured in them. The names the diarist drops might seem like a who’s who in Adelaide literary circles at the time, but the list of lives lost and references to many longer term effects of war, ably summed up by Barson’s closing chapters, juxtapose the social gaiety with chilling sadness.

The work is a dazzling example of diary writing — and an absorbing read. Carys’s memorable observations bring alive the homes, streets and dance halls of Adelaide, and the complex days of fun and tragedy experienced by a girl emerging as a young woman in those war years.




Lorraine McLoughlin
Author of George Tetlow and Mark and Jill Pearse: Lives in art (2015)
Barbara Robertson: An Australian artist’s life (2009)