Thanks to an old timekeeping watch, they somehow swap bodies and timeframes. Cat Feeney lives in Sydney, 2021, getting up early every morning for squad training, even though she’s not as committed as she should be. Fanny Durack is from the Sydney of 1908 – she lives over a pub with her parents and eight siblings and regularly escapes the chores of skinning rabbits and washing bedlinen by hand to swim instead. They spoke of their different approaches – Emily’s organised approach versus Nova’s wing-it ways – and their research trip to Sydney, which involved swimming in Wylie’s Baths.Įlsewhere Girls is the story of two swimmers living in different times. She told us it was a publisher’s dream to have writers of Emily and Nova’s talent approach her with a ‘thing’ they’d written, wondering whether Text would be interested.Įmily and Nova gave us a glimpse into their collaborative writing process with the way they laughed and chatted together. Jane Pearson from Text Publishing introduced the writers. Their book was launched at Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library by Leesa Lambert from The Little Bookroom, with sparkling wine and cupcakes, beautifully decorated with images of the characters. Jacqui Davies is a freelance writer and reviewer based in South Australia.Last week, I went to the book launch for Elsewhere girls, a middle-grade novel by a pair of well-known Melbourne writers, Emily Gale and Nova Weetman. Elsewhere Girls is full of Gale and Weetman’s incisive charm and wit, and the pair’s existing middle-grade fans will happily devour this intimate, perceptive look at equality, class, women’s rights and what matters most.
As Fan grapples with mobile phones and revealing bathing suits, Cat is tasked with enduring 12-hour washing days and emptying chamber pots. It’s a pleasure to stumble along with moody Cat and affable Fan as, in alternating chapters, they attempt to reverse the ‘unwinding’ of time while making sense of their new surroundings and keeping the truth of their changed identities hidden. When a strange encounter with a silver stopwatch causes the girls to switch bodies, everything the girls have ever known about themselves, their families and swimming is turned upside down. In 1908, 16-year-old Fanny Durack (based on the Olympic champion of the same name) must fight for every opportunity just to train in a world where women are expected to stay at home and do housework. Thirteen-year-old Cat Feeney has earned a swimming scholarship at a fancy new school in Sydney, but she’s struggling to commit to the 5 am starts and endless training. Authors Emily Gale and Nova Weetman have teamed up to write this beautifully rendered time-slip narrative that delves into the personal and social struggles of young women past and present.
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