'End of school is a crucial time for life -making decisions.Eighteen year old best friends Dessi Cowan, Lilbet's grandniece, and her best friend Emma Simpson have planned a celebratory trip to the Gold Coast.
Emma is an artist, Dessi a poet; their mothers long term 'best friends'. In the past the girls have always been there for each other and this relationship is central to their lives. However, when Emma meets charming Adbul Malouf and Dessi is forced to stay in Melbourne to recover from a car accident, Emma asks her friend to look after Abdul while she is away.
On the Gold Coast Emma meets up with her father and participates in some of the Schoolies activities. Her closest male friend Sasha, convinced he might be 'gay', takes her to a 'gay' club and then realises he is really 'straight'.
In Melbourne Dessi is totally infatuated with Abdul who takes her home twice. Though his parents are openly appalled at his taking up with a non-Moslem girl, for Dessi his 'stop-start' behaviour only makes him more desirable.
When Emma's mother is diagnosed with cancer, Emma cuts short her holiday only to be confronted by Dessi's duplicity. As the story progresses both girls must spend a lot of time coming to terms with these events.' (Publisher's blurb)
Body and Soul : Lilbet's Romance
Briar Hill
:
Indra Publishing
,
2003
Z1049406
2003
single work
novel
young adult
historical fiction
'A young adult novel set in 1938 about an eighteen-year-old crippled girl's account of the love affair between a recent migrant to Melbourne and her twin sister, with the boy entrancing everyone about them, except for narrator Lilbet who suspects that he might not be all that he seems.' (Source: The Bibliography of Australasian Judaica 1788-2008)
