Maria Lewitt is, if anything, a writer in the realistic mode, and she might be among the last to see her own work – and characters – in either symbolic or allegorical terms, For, their flesh­bone-and-blood individuality and tangibility aside, the major protagonists of her autobiographical novel No Snow in December – sequel to her earlier prize-winning Come Spring – could well be seen to constitute a spectrum. representing the migrant’s coming to terms with the land of his/her adoption.

At the one end of that spectrum stands Victor, a lively once-likeable acquaintance from narrator Irena’s Polish past, now a man embittered, sardonic and hating, a man obsessed and possessed by that past which has seen the wartime butchering of his first wife and child and which has, as a consequence, come to colour – or poison – with suspicion, cynicism and sheer malice every act of decency, courage or suffering he encounters in Australia.