Victoria Purman The Marriage Trap Harlequin Australia, HQ (Fiction, Non Fiction, YA) & MIRA | HQ, April 2026
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
I regret having come late to Victoria Purman’s historical fiction, and of the many books she has published I have read only two: The Radio Hour and The Marriage Trap. They both feature a limited number of characters, none of whom is a public figure. However, each is recognisable as representing someone whose story might dovetail easily into the reader’s experience or a group whose story demands to be told. While never neglecting her characters’ individual experiences, Purman weaves around them an absorbing social, economic, and political commentary which reflects Australia’s past. In reading The Marriage Trap this has been an immediate past, with enticing reminders of events with which I am relatively familiar. For younger readers, the narrative is likely to be astonishing at times, with glimmerings of recognition that provide them with the tools to understand their older relatives and the social environment with which they grappled. The Marriage Trap is followed by an insightful acknowledgment of the political changes which have taken place since the setting of this book, which takes place from 1960 to the early 1970s.
Olive, Cathy, and Evelyn are the main protagonists; the introduction of effective birth control, ‘the pill’, is the theme. Olive is a committed Catholic, whose marriage to Len includes dealing with his mother, widow of a Methodist Minister. The weekly Sunday roast is accompanied by her unappreciated lectures on how young women should behave. Cathy is unrepentantly resistant to them; Evelyn is rather in awe. But then, Evelyn at ten is rather in awe of many things – Cathy’s boyfriend, Ringo Starr, and words. The dictionary is Evelyn’s constant companion and adds information as well as gentle humour to the narrative.
Pregnancy, in and out of marriage, for Olive and Cathy is unexpected and the limits it imposes on them are subtly observed. Cathy’s marriage, two children and the end to her career foster her determination that Evelyn will not go into adulthood with as little knowledge as she had – and it becomes clear, as little as Olive knew about her body and ‘the change.’ For Evelyn, many years younger than her siblings, was an unwanted pregnancy resulting from Olive’s lack of knowledge, and her doctor’s incapacity to give her the information she needed. The same doctor, the agreeable old family doctor of Cathy’s childhood, becomes a sinister figure in her search for birth control as offered by the miraculous pill straightforwardly available to her non-Catholic friends.
Along side this central theme are so many other responses to the changes that were taking place in Australia in the 1960s and 70s. The Beatles’ music, and then that of the Rolling Stones and the former groups’ Australian visit are so important to Evelyn and her friends that some defy school attendance to see them. Cathy and her friends picnic with their children, discuss birth control and make the best of their lives as wives and mothers. However, Purnam provides glimmers of possibilities without retreating from a severe look at women’s lives in these years. Olive has none of these advantages, her life is consumed by marriage, her children, and, until the importance of birth control is brought home to her forcefully and devastatingly, the church.
Purnam’s characterisation is striking, her storytelling engaging and informative, and she addresses significant themes. Her historical fiction offers readers insightful narratives about Australian society at the same time as delivering absorbing books that beg to be read.
Thomas Doherty How Film Became History The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America Columbia University Press, April 2026.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
This is a beautifully written narrative of an achievement that has made historical events accessible. This accessibility is reflected in Doherty’s writing, from the story about the early Russian influence on the form arising from the lack of current material to the vast amount that was available by the 1930s. By then a variety of sources were universally recognised for their value, and Doherty’s story draws us into the almost magical way in which raw material became documentaries – some propaganda, some authentic, some accepted into ‘picture houses’ and some denied to the public because of censorship. Although Thomas Doherty refers to well-known films, he also introduces largely unknown material, and in doing so makes another contribution to the knowledge about archival documentaries.
The story of documentaries becoming vehicles for exploring and reporting major political issues is not only exciting, but instructive. Doherty is a master at identifying the complications of censorship and detecting political propaganda plus contrasting it with politically astute and useful material. He also introduces vital discussion of the value of less obviously politically motivated information and its role in treating an audience to easily digested historical research. He is disarmingly honest about the way in which manipulated archival material could be manipulated to take in even the wariest researcher such as himself in a first encounter with one reenactment. The lengthy and detailed story is fascinating. It not only raises historical nature of alarm about reenactments, a well-worn debate about historical ‘truth,’ but the way in which historians work.
Example after intriguing example of the work Doherty has studied for this book follow. Once again, it is necessary to reiterate how engaging is the text, how it continues to raise ethical questions, such as the impact of digital improvements made to original footage, the role of those who conserve and restore, and provides a sound education to readers on how they might interrogate the material that has evolved to produce one aspect of American history.
There are notes to each of the chapters: a Prologue; Newsreels in the Morgue, Four years of Visible Hell in Seventy Seven Minutes, The Search for Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin (1937), The Movies Turn Introspective and A Good Deal of Newsreel Content Belongs on the Marquee. In this uncorrected proof there is no bibliography. However, given the extensive notes referencing events, key figures, and ideas from diverse sources, it promises to be both fascinating and informative, reflecting the narrative Thomas Doherty unfolds in How Film Became History The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America.
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