Engaging journey

Imago
By Francesca Rendle-Short
Spinifex Press, 1996. 230 pp., $16.95
Reviewed by Carla Gorton

"To wait ... is in a sense to be powerless. If we grow weary of waiting, we can go on a journey." (Mary Morris, Maiden Voyages).

This epigraph introduces the reader to Francesca Rendle-Short's novel Imago. The imagined journey is totally engaging, a journey of self-discovery, metamorphosis and the friendship between two women.

Newly married Molly Rose Moone emigrates from England to Australia. It is 1960 and the young couple arrive in Canberra. Once Molly meets Marj, the transformation takes shape, rich and painful, at times tortuously so.

Imago is Rendle-Short's first novel. Currently Canberra-based, Rendle-Short, a teacher and ABC radio producer, grew up in Queensland, which features strongly in her writing.

After leaving Queensland in 1979, she studied at the University of New England and was later involved in the Adelaide writing scene. She read in Adelaide during March at the Fringe Festival.

From GLW issue 233