'In 1930s Adelaide, four women turn to witchcraft to undermine a new authoritarian government determined to enforce their marriage and virtual enslavement.
'In the 1930s in Adelaide, sisters Margaret and Esther Beasley and their friend Phyllis O’Donnell are learning to be witches. Their guide is Audrey Macquarie, a glamorous, Communist schoolmate who was taught the art of changing dreams by her suffragette great-aunt, Delia Maddingley. This subtle magic, known only to spinsters, has been passed from aunt to niece for generations. Now this group of young women are using it to power their own small revolution, undermining a system that wants them married, uneducated and at home.
'As Europe begins falling to fascism, these women – the Semaphore Supper Club – stumble on a nest of Nazi sympathisers in the poetry salons of Adelaide. The poets’ political connections help them rise in power, until the Club finds they aren’t just fighting chauvinist writers but have taken on Australia’s new authoritarian government. As the government discovers it too can harness dreams, Margaret, Esther, Phyl and Audrey face an overwhelming force they cannot defeat. Each of them must decide whether – and how – to continue the struggle in the face of almost certain failure.
'The History of Dreams explores female friendship, the power of finding a vocation, and the importance of joy in a time of political darkness. It asks what our responsibilities are when faced with an unjust government, particularly when we have the privilege to look the other way.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'A coven of witches conspire to upset the socio-political status quo in sleepy Adelaide.'
'History happens to us in dreams: it is experienced and understood there as much as in our waking lives. Neuroscientists have known this for some time, but these pandemic years have provided a sudden abundance of data, intensive and immediate, and global in scale, for those who work with dreams. Their reports are of dreams about swarming insects, billowing gas, and other transferred contaminations; about shadowed monsters and snipers lurking on the other side of a window or wall. There are more literal dreams about funerals and hospitals, accidental handshakes or hugs; about forgotten face masks, a new variant of that archetypal dream of public nakedness realised suddenly and far too late. In pandemic dreams, the dead speak. The dreamer cannot find their way home, is pursued. All of these are dreams that grapple with upheaval and threat, with fear, with the difficult adjustments to a world unsteadied suddenly, transformed.'(Introduction)
'In an age of polarisation, it’s instructive to return to the late 1930s, in the lead up to World War II, when the far left and far right were energised and prominent. In Australia, we tend to think that Nazi sympathisers didn’t exist, or were never significant, but in fact there were documented events in Adelaide and Katoomba that revealed fervent support for Hitler’s rise to power.' (Introduction)
'Allegories can be divisive. They are inherently deceptive, forever speaking with forked tongues. Animal Farm both is and isn’t a fairy story about talking pigs. Spenser’s Faerie Queene isn’t just an epic poem about the Redcrosse Knight’s chivalric virtues. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn’t merely a fantasy about plucky children conquering a malicious ice queen. Some readers enjoy being literary archaeologists fossicking beneath a narrative’s surface for deeper meaning. There is a thrill in peering through a story’s topsoil, discovering the many-layered substrata beneath it, seeing the author’s politics supporting the words. Others prefer texts without overt messages. To them, as Barthes puts it, the writer should be ‘dead’. Let readers engage with the work on their own terms. Let the book speak for itself.' (Introduction)
'Imagine that Grace Tame, happening on the late Philip Roth in his study, hard at work on his World War II alternative history The Plot Against America, tied the novelist to his chair and began a radical rewrite: shifting its setting from 1930s and ’40s Newark to suburban Adelaide of the same era, and changing the narrative so that the primary group to suffer under a concocted local fascist state is women. Oh, and she makes the heroines of her story a coven of young witches.' (Introduction)
'Allegories can be divisive. They are inherently deceptive, forever speaking with forked tongues. Animal Farm both is and isn’t a fairy story about talking pigs. Spenser’s Faerie Queene isn’t just an epic poem about the Redcrosse Knight’s chivalric virtues. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn’t merely a fantasy about plucky children conquering a malicious ice queen. Some readers enjoy being literary archaeologists fossicking beneath a narrative’s surface for deeper meaning. There is a thrill in peering through a story’s topsoil, discovering the many-layered substrata beneath it, seeing the author’s politics supporting the words. Others prefer texts without overt messages. To them, as Barthes puts it, the writer should be ‘dead’. Let readers engage with the work on their own terms. Let the book speak for itself.' (Introduction)
'In an age of polarisation, it’s instructive to return to the late 1930s, in the lead up to World War II, when the far left and far right were energised and prominent. In Australia, we tend to think that Nazi sympathisers didn’t exist, or were never significant, but in fact there were documented events in Adelaide and Katoomba that revealed fervent support for Hitler’s rise to power.' (Introduction)
'History happens to us in dreams: it is experienced and understood there as much as in our waking lives. Neuroscientists have known this for some time, but these pandemic years have provided a sudden abundance of data, intensive and immediate, and global in scale, for those who work with dreams. Their reports are of dreams about swarming insects, billowing gas, and other transferred contaminations; about shadowed monsters and snipers lurking on the other side of a window or wall. There are more literal dreams about funerals and hospitals, accidental handshakes or hugs; about forgotten face masks, a new variant of that archetypal dream of public nakedness realised suddenly and far too late. In pandemic dreams, the dead speak. The dreamer cannot find their way home, is pursued. All of these are dreams that grapple with upheaval and threat, with fear, with the difficult adjustments to a world unsteadied suddenly, transformed.'(Introduction)
