Books like The Harp in the South Trilogy

I loved this beautifully written book, which is an Australian classic. I had already read Poor Man's Orange but the trilogy provides much greater depth and insight into the characters and their sad but hope-filled lives in the slums of Sydney's Surry Hills. The trilogy traces the saga of the Darcy family over thirty or more years. Mumma with her stoic, pious exterior, her drunken husband Hughie, and their daughters Roie (Rowena) and Dolour. The characters are brilliantly drawn, loveable, rough yet tender, funny. I laughed and cried. Ruth Park writes with a delicate touch. She has compassion and tenderness towards her rough but gutsy characters. Her writing style is exquisite, abounding in appropriate similes and metaphors. Sentences such as the ones below are everywhere, amid the traumas and triumphs of a family growing up amid squalor.'Beyond the violet-blue oblong of the window, rimmed with the blowing shadows of the ragged curtains, a flight of white stars slanted across the sky.'Mumma is interacting with Hughie. 'Mumma's love retreated like a turtle into its shell.''Mumma was there in the waiting-room, sunken into a queer shapeless heap like a clay statue that has been out in the rain.'Although the second and third books of the trilogy are written in the late 1940s, they have the sharp edge of modern literature, softened by the author's love for her characters. A very good read. www.facebook.com/jeanette.grantthomson