This novel is full of half-remembered incidents from theĪuthor’s own life, combined with fictional imaginings of the lives of her ancestors,īraided together to create a whimsical meditation on love and loss, on the ties Little brown suitcase … and try not to think about home’. They carry little suitcases to imagined safety and hope to findĪ place where they can put their suitcase down and unpack. A set of warm clothes, a photograph of loved ones, a ‘There are suitcasesĮverywhere… They cover the country … People carry little brown suitcases. The cover), it would be a little brown suitcase. If there was a motif in this story (besides the red fox of Up knowing nothing else, and who struggle to understand the complexities of Stories are told from the points of view of the grandchildren, who have grown The life they left, but nor do they truly embrace the life they have. Each feels disappointed and unsupported in their fate. Two grandmothers, Mana and Eva, were separated as children, one remaining toįace life in Prague, one migrating to the other side of the world to build a
Mala lives inĪustralia with her grandparents, young and perhaps more free, although alwaysĬonsidered the outsiders, the ‘wogs’ always pining for the home country. Ludek lives in Czechoslovakia with his Babi (grandma), young andįree despite the relative poverty of their communist regime. But it mostly takes place in 1980, in both PragueĪnd Melbourne. Informed by her autobiographical knowledge of her own grandparents and their stories, and her recollections of their lives, the novel is nevertheless a fictional tale of a country divided and a family divided, told from the perspectives of two of the grandchildren, Ludek and Mala. Favel Parrett’s much anticipated third novel There Was Still Love (Hachette 2019) is a slim, literary exploration of family, memory, sacrifice and culture.
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