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The anxieties and strangeness of Cold War
Australia make Ursula Dubosarsky's The Red Shoe (ages 11+) a
considerably more intense, suspenseful kind of period piece, one that
lives on in the mind long after it's finished. Matilda, 6, Frances, 11, and Elizabeth, 15, live in a tiny suburb of summer residences near Sydney, Australia. In April 1954, the neighbouring house becomes the hideaway of the defected Soviet ambassador to Australia. Only Matilda suspects who the mysterious gentleman is, but somehow, his presence there becomes connected with the many uncertainties the family is facing – Elizabeth has had a nervous breakdown and stopped going to school; Frances discovers a friend has died; and all must cope with the absence of their loved, suicidal father. Dubosarsky offers three parallel coming-of-age moments in the lives of three very different sisters, evoking the concerns and sensibilities of each with humour and insight. She captures place and period with dream-like clarity. The waning summer, waves sounding "like people shouting, wanting her attention," even a breakfast of fried eggs staring up like "two huge moist yellow eyes," leap into focus under her pen. Excerpts from period newspapers from the time (the defection is factual) underscore the atmosphere of uncertainty with their references to the H-bomb, deaths by polio and Cold War tensions. In lucid, poetic prose Dubosarsky explores the deep feeling and acute but partial perceptions of children struggling with a world under threat. Utterly luminous.
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