‘Her face was crumpling as if she was about to cry, and it struck Emily for the first time that her grandmother had emotions in the same way that she herself did. How could she have imagined otherwise? And yet it was true that she’d never given it a thought. Grandmother was a pillar of strength who held everything together, the rock on whom they all depended. She was the one who enforced the rules and laid down the law, harrying them all to do better and not let standards slip. The idea that she might feel sorrow, fear and uncertainty was so alarming that Emily felt light-headed and had to put a hand on the back of the nearest chair for support. She was not ready to accept what she’d seen. She did not want Grandmother to be a mere mortal.”

The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean is the first novel by award-winning Australian screenwriter, teacher and author, Mira Robertson. Much to her dismay, fourteen-year-old Emily Dean has been sent to Mount Prospect, her grandmother’s property at Garnook until, her father says, things at home in East Malvern are back to normal.

She would much rather be with her parents, even if her mother can be exasperating at times. Sybil probably has bipolar disorder, although no such diagnosis exists in 1944, so she is simply put into an asylum when her behaviour becomes too difficult for her husband, Presbyterian minister Reverend Dean, to handle.

Now Emily will be stuck at Mount Prospect at least until school starts. She’ll be subject to the whims of the hateful “Cousin” Eunice, who finds her chores to do like dusting the billiards room or sweeping the ten verandahs or watering the hydrangeas because, as Della the cook says, Emily is at the bottom of the pecking order. Her young Aunt Lydia, a twenty-two-year-old who can wear even drab men’s clothing with stylish aplomb, and with whom she longs to have an intimate friendship, has her helping to set and clear the rabbit traps, nausea notwithstanding.

It’s all a far cry from how a twenty-first century teen would spend her summer vacation: no personal phone, only the party line shared with two other properties, and then trunk calls restricted to urgent matters; “snail” mail just twice a week; entertainment consisting entirely of self-made activities like playing piano, listening to the radio, reading the classics, playing cards.

But then there’s Claudio, the handsome Italian POW, with whom Emily finds herself spending time after he has expressed a desire to learn English. And her Uncle William’s writing retreat, filled with enticing books to read. She describes all this in an ongoing, unsent letter to Dorothy, a girl from school into whose clique she has never been welcomed, making her exile sound exciting and romantic.

Robertson easily conveys wartime country Victoria in this charming coming-of-age tale. Her version of the teen on the cusp of development is well rendered: Emily is young and therefore naïve and prone, at times, to misconstrue the words and acts of the adults around her. The supporting characters are also appealing and more than one-dimensional: their dialogue is credible and provides humour. And finally, Emily gains some understanding: “At the heart of her rambling train of thought was the dawning recognition that, so far in her life, she had accepted a great deal as truth that might, in reality, be simply prejudice.”

Robertson’s descriptive prose is quite marvellous: “’He is not poor William,’ she said in a voice vibrating with suppressed emotion, giving Alma a look of such ferocious intensity that Emily felt it zap past like an arrow on its way to the bulls-eye” and “… a pair of boots, the heels worn down and tongues hanging out as if exhausted” are examples.

Also “Entering the churchyard, she was still thinking about the Italians. How different they were from Australian men, who spoke in monosyllables, squeezing out stingy words between lips that scarcely moved. Nor did Australian men move their hands in that excitable manner, instead letting them hang limply on the ends of their arms like small dead animals, or else stuffed into the pockets of their trousers and visible only in lumpy outline.”

This is an outstanding debut novel, contained in a gorgeous evocative cover designed by Jo Thomson, and it will be interesting to see what this talented author does next.