My copy of Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow was given to me by my mother in 1982, when I was 14 – the same age as the novel’s protagonist, Abigail Kirk. A sticker inside shows that my mother bought it at the Feminist Bookshop in Balmain, a shop I remember visiting with her more than once. The shop is long gone, and the Sydney where my mother bought the book has constantly been altered.
“In the first place, Abigail Kirk was not Abigail at all” is the novel’s striking opening sentence. Immediately, Park gives us a girl who feels out of place. It turns out she is not at home in her name or her family. Soon, her home city of Sydney will become strange to her too.
