WE OF THE NEVER-NEVER

This title, an Australian classic, recounts the author's experiences after she leaves her genteel city life in 1902 to live with her husband in the Northern Territory. Mary-Louise Walker's voice, with its quiet warmth, conveys well Gunn's admiration for her fellow bush folk, and she also does great frog impressions! Less palatable, though perhaps not unusual, is the author's patronizing portrayal of her servants, whose behaviors she often describes with amused curiosity. Peppered with references to "inscrutable Chinamen," "black boys" who seem rather simple, and worse, many passages can be even more difficult to listen to than to read, and there is little that Walker can do to redeem them. A.E.B. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2009]