Through it all, Frankie stands tall - loyal and feisty to the end.
Secret upon secret builds in this novel, until they start spilling over and then Frankie and her family have to deal with the fallout. In this portrayal of a media happy to brand Rowena a "witch" and other unsavoury things, we see echoes of Julia Gillard's treatment, and also that of Joan Kirner, by the fourth estate.Īs if that wasn't enough for Frankie to contend with, she finds herself falling for a handsome photographer from her school and feels like she is losing her best friend, Kessie, to a girlfriend she has never met. When Rowena is snapped by a photographer having a clandestine meeting with a young man, the press goes wild, making all sorts of insinuations about Rowena's moral character. Rowena tells Frankie, they are only words and can't hurt her, but it is clear the words do hurt. Gender politics is to the fore here, and Frankie, her brother Luke and her Dad are caught up in it whether they want to be or not.
We enter the lives of Frankie's family in the lead-up to the election and the media maelstrom it entails. Frankie is the kind of person I (and I suspect a lot of other people I know) would have wanted to be friends with at school.įrankie's mum, Rowena, is poised to be the next Premier of Victoria. In Frankie, Hayes has constructed a young woman who is smart, funny, vulnerable and loves Pearl Jam. Not because I felt like I had missed anything, but because I didn't want to let the characters go. When I finished One True Thing, I immediately wanted to read it again. She had a big job ahead of her to equal the emotional impact and engagement of that first effort - and she has absolutely achieved it. For those of you who follow my reviews, it will be no secret that I adored Nicole Hayes's debut novel, The Whole of My World.
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