![]() ![]() Mana and Eva are sisters with a catastrophic past that separated them, and the plot moves slowly towards revealing how a childhood misadventure led one to freedom in Australia while the remains captive to the restraints of life under the Soviet regime. Both these children have vivid interior lives, but family life is permeated by the silences of questions that are never answered. ‘Little Fox’, living in Melbourne with her grandparents Máňa and Bill and Luděk, living with his grandmother Eva in Prague. The novel is told from the limited third person perspective of two children: Malá Liška a.k.a. There Was Still Love extends this preoccupation with a wider world and its history: the novel tells parallel stories from the 1980s, in Melbourne and in Prague, (then behind the Iron Curtain), and there are flashbacks to the Nazi partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the postwar Soviet takeover, and the 1968 Soviet invasion to suppress the Prague Spring. Past the Shallows had a grim setting in Tasmania but When the Night Comes ventured further: her characters meet in Hobart, but the novel includes scenes from Denmark and aboard Australia’s Antarctic vessel, the Nella Dan. There Was Still Love is Favel Parrett’s third novel, and it shows her maturing style. ![]()
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