Love in the years of lunacy

Dirty dancing and jumping jazz are the backdrop for Australian author Mandy Sayer’s new page-turner about love and life in World War II.

Based on tales the author’s parents told her, the story follows Sydney saxophonist Pearl, who has hidden a series of tapes about her life and jazz education to be found by her nephew after her death. As he listens, she recounts the love affair she started with an African-American soldier, James Washington, while he was stationed in Sydney – a relationship that teaches her all she wished to know about music, romance and intimacy.

However, there were plenty of obstacles in the way. Despite Pearl’s family being an arty and eccentric lot, most of them don’t approve of their daughter dating a “coloured man”, except for her twin brother Martin, who himself is seeing someone he shouldn’t be.

Pearl and James’ love runs a passionate and emotional course, which takes them through psychiatric hospital treatment, cross-dressing, and the devastating war in New Guinea. The novel has a touch of the circus about it with performers and eccentric characters abounding, and often focuses on those that society sees as “outsiders”.

While the portrait painted of wartime Sydney is fascinating and well-researched, the plot takes liberties with realism, which makes much of this story difficult to take seriously, particularly when Pearl and Martin play a Parent Trap-style trick in the midst of a bloody war.