“You can never tell if a woman is having her own troubles. We’re so good at hiding them behind a smile and a laugh. Taught from birth, we are, to put on a brave face.”

A Woman’s Work is a historical novel by best-selling Australian author, Victoria Purman. Ivy Quinn went from being a secretary before the war, to a Corporal Stenographer in the AWAS in 1942, to war widow with a young son to raise alone. Her job as receptionist for Dr Watkins covers the cost of their small flat in St Kilda, but doesn’t leave her a lot of spare time. She freely admits that cooking has never been her forte and, while twelve-year-old Raymond never complains about the makeshift meals she serves, she wonders if she should try harder.

The enthusiasm that young mother of five, Kathleen O’Grady had for cooking when she first married Peter has understandably dwindled as exhaustion has taken over her life. “Kathleen’s time and energy had become increasingly consumed with nappies and cleaning and trips to the grocer and the fruiterer and the butcher and the fishmonger… being a wife and mother robbed her of sleep, distracted her, exhausted her, and despite the often overwhelming love for her children and her life, most days she went to bed feeling like the soggy dregs in the bottom of the sink.”

When the Australian Women’s Weekly announces a Cooking Contest, in which readers need to submit a recipe using one or more of five specific ingredients, the generous cash prize has even the poorest cooks wondering if they could win something. Raymond convinces Ivy that they could, together, try out some dishes to hopefully win a prize: the idea of buying a television set, or getting tickets to the Olympics, is a great incentive.

Kathleen is ready to dismiss the idea outright, but her mother, ever perceptive of her daughter’s condition, suggests they make a day of cooking potential winners once a week. It’s true that not every attempt is a success: Peter O’Grady, raised to be waited on, displays some xenophobic attitudes, even towards food. And Ivy’s first go, she laughingly admits, tasted like glue.

Prefacing some chapters with traditional recipes (actually sourced from magazines from the 1950’s), Purman paints a very realistic picture of a woman’s lot during that era. She demonstrates the difficulties caused by the Catholic Church’s ruling on contraception; the discrimination against women in so many aspects of life; and women’s powerlessness against domestic violence.

Her characters are likeable and much more than one-dimensional, growing and developing as their story progresses. They deal with homophobia, bullying, and the ignorance and small-mindedness characteristic of many at the time. Attitudes to polio vaccination show that anti-vaxers are not a new phenomenon.

Purman conveys her setting and era with consummate ease: cultural references like austerity cookbooks, darning stockings, Woman’s Weekly culinary suggestions, magazines in which a myriad of products offer cash for product captions and testimonials, the repurposing moth-eaten knitwear, simple leisure activities, going to the cinema, and the scarcity of TV, all cement her tale firmly in the mid-1950s. Well-researched, interesting and moving, this is superlative Australian historical fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Harlequin Australia.