From Publishers Weekly
This first novel stagnates after a promising beginning. Ursula Fraser enjoys a comfortable childhood in pre-WW II Singapore until her colonialist father remarries. When the Japanese sweep into Malaysia, her stepmother flees with her own children, leaving Ursula behind; she is saved because her amah dyes her skin and passes her off as a native. Orphaned by the war's end, Ursula joins an aunt and uncle in London, escaping them via a hasty marriage at age 18 to a dashing, sophisticated womanizer. At this point Bullen's faith in Ursula seems to wither: coping with motherhood and an absentee husband, the heroine seems to flick her own maturity on and off, the sound judgment she evinced as an adolescent all but vanished. She and her daughter transplant themselves to Australia, where Ursula then enters an affair with a rising, married politician. Though Bullen does justice to the story's three settings, she fails to make Ursula's trials truly compelling.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Bullen uses her own first-hand knowledge of various parts of the world to smoothly move her heroine, Ursula Fraser, daughter of a British colonial, from a privileged childhood in Singapore prior to World War II to postwar England and finally to modern Australia. Ursula spends the war hiding from the Japanese in a native village with her servants. Later, as an orphaned young woman, she is sent to inhospitable, emotionally parsimonious relatives in England. A brief stint as a London governess leads her to an intolerable marriage and flight to Australia to reclaim some derelict inherited property. Tragedy, hostility, forbidden love, and more befall her, but she perseveres and triumphs. A brisk novel of lively dialog, vivid descriptions, and diverse, colorful characters, this will satisfy genre fans; first novelist Bullen successfully utilizes every cliche and coincidence of family sagas.
- Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P . L., Col.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P . L., Col.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
