Spinning a great yarn

Yarn Spinners by Leura’s Marilla North is a highly engaging, fascinating window onto the lives of three of Australia's foremost authors of the mid- 20th century  ‒ Dymphna Cusack, Miles Franklin and Florence James.

As Mary Kostakidis puts it in her preface, "Dymphna Cusack, Miles Franklin and Florence James come alive in these pages through their friendships, their aspirations, their passions and achievements, their disappointments, insecurities and triumphs."

And come alive they do. The correspondence is openly honest and ever witty, urbane, acerbic and compelling as the three forge their way through the labyrinth of conservative Australian society and the stodgy literary world of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, reaching a pinnacle with the publication of the international bestseller, the acclaimed and now classic "Come In Spinner."

The book lifted the lid on the seamy side of Sydney at the end of World War Two, when American servicemen were "overpaid, oversexed and over here" and follows the lives and loves of women in a story centred on a flash city hotel and its beauty salon.

North details the endlessly frustrating, byzantine path the book took to publication and success. It won the 1946 Sydney Daily Telegraph novel prize but ultimately wasn’t published by the Telegraph because of fears that it was too racy, salacious, and, ultimately, too on the money.

Dymphna Cusack is essentially the central character in North's book, and through her we experience the struggles lasting many long years, and the eventual triumph of the book she co-wrote with Florence James.

Another earlier writing project from the 1930s that Cusack  co-wrote with Miles Franklin called “Pioneers on Parade”, that satirised the fawning attitude of sections of Sydney society to British visiting aristocracy,  is also followed in satisfying detail, including its bumpy ride with conservative readers and critics.

Interwoven through the stories of writing and publishing are the social causes the three women championed throughout their lives - women's rights, a fair go for workers and free speech against the backlash of post WWII anti-Communist hysteria. After Cusack's move to London in the early 1950s she was also involved in the peace and ban-the-bomb movements.

And throughout her long career, Cusack never loses sight of her goal, as a young aspiring writer, to present women "as we know them. Thinking, working, loving, desiring... Moving between ecstasy and despair. Full of longing for the wider horizons - and a little afraid of the snapped cables and the dragging anchors”.

In the book’s pages Cusack also stoically endures decades of poor and often debilitating health, suffering from MS, which was not a diagnosed disease in her time, and which she simply dubbed her "dogs disease".

In her Introduction, North describes her method as "narrative biography", weaving together the letters between the three authors over decades, as well as press excerpts from the period and other ephemera, linked with essential explanatory passages by North that keep the narrative flow brisk, smooth and seamless.

At the centre of all these currents and crosscurrents of stories, North works more as a weaver than a puppeteer, and the reader follows each fascinating thread to its conclusion. She has shaped this edition to work as the first volume of her biographical trilogy, re-creating the life and times of Dymphna Cusack and those with whom she shared her incredible life's journey.

In all Yarn Spinners is a beautifully curated and crafted work, meticulous in its detail and annotation and superb in its evocation of the vivid colour and lived lives of three writers and the Sydney they all called home, and who endured illness, heartache, professional jealousy, moralistic judgement and backward political obstruction, ultimately to triumph, as North does herself in this remarkable volume.  It's a Southerly Buster of a book.

Reviewed by Dr Larry Buttrose