Young Adult Fiction

A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French

by Gillian Dooley •

February 2011, no. 328

HarperCollins, $19.99 pb, 479 pp, 9780732290214

Young Adult Fiction

A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French

by Gillian Dooley •

February 2011, no. 328

Jackie French, a prolific author, is best known for her children’s books, with variations on historical themes clearly something of a specialty. A Waltz for Matilda, which seems to be aimed at a broader market, builds on the premise that the Jolly Swagman of Banjo Paterson’s song is not alone. His twelve-year-old daughter, Matilda, is with him and witnesses the whole upsetting scene. (When, years later, a friend points out that ‘they never mentioned you’ in the song, the proto-feminist Matilda replies, ‘No. The songs rarely mention the women.’)

Gillian Dooley

By this contributor

Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English at Flinders University, and a Visiting Fellow in the Music Department at Southampton University. Her publications include an edited book of interviews with Iris Murdoch (2003), V.S. Naipaul, Man and Writer (2006), J.M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative (2010), and journal articles on a range of literary topics including music in the life and work of Jane Austen. In 2005 she co-edited Matthew Flinders’ Private Journal and in 2014 she published an edition of the correspondence between Iris Murdoch and the Australian radical philosopher Brian Medlin. She has been a regular reviewer for ABR since 2002. She is founding editor of the online journals Transnational Literature and Writers in Conversation.