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Secrets by Drusilla Modjeska, Amanda Lohrey and Robert Dessaix

by
November 1997, no. 196

Secrets by Drusilla Modjeska, Amanda Lohrey and Robert Dessaix

Pan Macmillan $29.95 hb, 372 pp

Secrets by Drusilla Modjeska, Amanda Lohrey and Robert Dessaix

by
November 1997, no. 196

Can you keep a secret
I don’t suppose you can
you mustn’t laugh, you mustn’t cry
but do the best you can.

That old rhyme sits unpondered in the memory of every woman or man who grew up to speak English or chant it in the many incantatory rituals of childhood. It is locked in there, partnered with the rhythmic thud of a skipping rope and spirals drawn on your palm to test endurance, in the exquisite torture test that was part primitive ordeal, part initiation into a social community that had its mysteries and its taboos and its transgressions. Children move naturally in this world of internalised rhythms, of things unexplained, of enigma and excitement.

Morag Fraser reviews 'Secrets' by Drusilla Modjeska, Amanda Lohrey and Robert Dessaix

Secrets

by Drusilla Modjeska, Amanda Lohrey and Robert Dessaix

Pan Macmillan $29.95 hb, 372 pp

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