Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The Angel in the House

by
December 2004–January 2005, no. 267

War Babies: A Memoir by Robert Macklin

Pandanus, $34.95pb, 242pp

The Angel in the House

by
December 2004–January 2005, no. 267

For some long-forgotten and surely misplaced medical reason, I was forced as a child to take spoonfuls of vile white poison called Hypol. It may have had some sinister connection with cod-liver oil – I no longer know or care. I mention this arcane information because Robert Macklin’s memoir War Babies, is the first example know to me of Hypol’s appearance in a literary work. I don’t recall anyone else mentioning ‘the Rawleigh’s man’ from whom my mother, not liking to send this hawker away without a sale of any kind, would buy jelly crystals.

The first half of War Babies is full of details resonant to me and, I suspect, to many other readers of a certain age. It’s not just the trade names, but slang terms and clichés, moments of childish awe at the strangeness and excitement of life, all seen through the eyes of the very youthful protagonist. Robbie, who will later, as a jackaroo, metamorphose into ‘Bob’. There’s the Silent Knight refrigerator (ours was very unreliable, as I recall, and given to puffing out fumes that darkened the kitchen ceiling); there are girls who ‘get the giggles’; there is a non-churchgoer who claims descent from ‘a long line of Calathumpians’; there is a ‘sook’, a ‘spine-basher’. a ‘confirmed bachelor’ and lots of ‘Aunties and Uncles’; boys come ‘busters’ off bikes: and father goes to ‘the rubbidy’.

War Babies: A Memoir

War Babies: A Memoir

by Robert Macklin

Pandanus, $34.95pb, 242pp

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.