HARROWFORD HALL
A safe haven for lost girls? Or a breeding ground for revenge?
It’s 1973 and Detective Sergeant Eleanor Smith is finally assigned her first homicide case. A woman’s body has been discovered at Harrowford Hall, a home for unmarried mothers deep in the Victorian countryside.
Led by the formidable Mrs Montague, Harrowford has for decades sold itself as a refuge for ‘girls in crisis’ - like fourteen-year-old Jane McEvoy, who has no idea of how she got pregnant. And Marilyn Pollard, a scared, angry teenager desperate to escape.
But when Detective Smith arrives at the once-grand gothic mansion, she finds it all but deserted. What’s more, the home’s overgrown graveyard suggests the apparent poisoning of Nurse Chapman is not Harrowford’s first suspicious death . . .
The Hollow Girl, Lyn Yeowart
The second psychological thriller from Lyn Yeowart, THE HOLLOW GIRL, is set in the West of Victoria around Ballarat, Ararat and Horsham, employing the dual timelines of the 1960's when a home for 'girls in crisis' near Horsham known as Harrowford Hall, takes in young, unmarried, pregnant girls, and the 1970's when Ballarat based newly qualified (and controversially as far as her awful boss is concerned) female DS Eleanor Smith is assigned to investigate the murder of a nurse at the now closing Hall.
Starting in the 1970's, Eleanor Smith is a wonderful character, brought to life by a unique voice, determination, and grit in the face of the childish and frankly pathetic behaviour of her boss - who is one of those quintessential 1970s piggish men who should have been obliterated from the face of the earth, and even more pathetically seem to linger on. She's palmed off on this low-profile murder case (the victim is female after all), and assigned a "helper" of a very new constable who is part of a fast-track programme getting newly graduated cops to shadow detectives - so less help / more work experience student, although he does turn out to be handy at taking notes, and tracking down the local fish and chip shops and Chinese takeaways.
Back in the 1960's, Harrowford Hall is a government owned institution that takes in pregnant unmarried girls, until the birth of their babies. Advertised as a haven, it's more of a horror show, with cruelty manifest and abuse and manipulation all the rage.
Needless to say, what starts out as the death of one of the nurses in the Hall that is now in the process of being shuttered by Matron Denise Montague and a few remaining staff, becomes a considerably more worrying investigation when Smith discovers the graves of hundreds of dead babies, one of which has been dug up and the coffin smashed and some very questionable attitudes from those remaining staff. Not made easier when the deeply suspicious Montague is found dead, and then another connection dies in Ballarat.
THE HOLLOW GIRL is profoundly uncomfortable reading, as it should be. The story here is based loosely on facts, the enforced adoption of babies which eventually led to a formal apology in the Federal Parliament. What is probably less well known, is the attitudes, the cruelty, the language and the abuses. The sheer effrontery of calling young teenagers, one in particular, 14 years old, tarts, whores, sluts, all while wielding sticks in a brutal manner, and chemical manipulation, well it's appalling. As is the vicious, targetted, knowing misogyny from Smith's boss.
There are moments of lightness in this though - the growing friendship between Smith and her hapless, and frankly thoughtless at times, offsider Roland Ogier is clever - with the dialogue and wit of their exchanges both realistic and hopeful. (I particularly appreciated the way that Smith reminded Ogier that it takes "two to tango" when he was inclined to slip into victim blaming of these young women placed in such a difficult situation by "expectations").
The novel is also a timely reminder of "expectations" and the way that shame is weaponised by so many people to control, degrade, or deflect. As Smith reminds us, babies aren't produced by unmarried mother's alone, and the death of a third victim, who happens to be male, and the accused father of a very young girl's baby, is the catalyst for the mostly male police force to extract their digits and look like they give a damn. Only in so far as there's a female victim who makes a convenient suspect mind you.
Once their likely target is identified, bullied into confessing, declared mentally incompetent and locked up, Smith's job becomes even more urgent, and it's increasingly obvious that politically, working within the police force to get real change isn't going to work. So she moves on, and in doing so, takes a different tack, resulting in an even more devastating and infuriating reveal.
The sense of place works in this, although maybe even more so for this reader who is well aware of the awfulness of the Ararat Asylum, the pathetic misogyny of the 1970's and the way shame has been weaponised against the wrong people (you couldn't grow up in Ballarat in that timeframe and not now be acutely aware of the utter bullshit that was flung around to cover up some of the worst of the criminal behaviour after all).
Huge kudos must go to Yeowart for this book, she's given voice to young women in both those timelines articulating what they saw, experienced, and how what was done to them has had lifelong impacts. She's called out the people who tried to control them, and drawn a stark picture of the avarice and disregard for others - in this case the abusers were women as well as men - in a particularly clear-eyed, and sharply observant manner. She's used wit where appropriate, but also allows the reader to sit with the shock, horror, and awfulness in a reflective and considered manner. For anybody unaware of just what the very recent past was really like, when contraception wasn't readily available, and all the responsibility for mistakes rested with one party, be they willing participant or abused victim, then read THE HOLLOW GIRL. Then look around at the weaponisation of shame in all it's vicious manifestations that's on the rise yet again.