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This
is a story that spans a vast part of the history of Irish settlement
in Australia. It is imbued with a Celtic heart, it is backlit with
romance and a visceral bitterness and an amazing amount of forgiveness.
At its core this is like most biographies, partly a lament and also
a celebration of human endeavour of courage, guile mixed fortunes
and the shift in prosperity that comes with the effect of war and
of new beginnings.
Evolution of a Family
also provides the reader with a cracking
account of early Victoria. There are many vivid passages that will
usher an already interested reader through the streets and buildings,
the church institutions and the underbelly of poverty in a newly
developing country ........... It has taken the author and will
certainly carry the reader, into some dark corners of the psyche.
There has been one can imagine much soul-searching and a level of
bravery and enormous questing discipline to complete this book.
The whole is presented through the eye and emotions of a writer
with a keen and fearlessly honest intellect.
In the assessor’s opinion this is a book as good as AB Facey’s A
Fortunate Life.
Victorian
Writers Centre Manuscript Assessment – March 2011
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