Dymphna: Review of 'Dymphna Cusack', by Norman Freehill and Dymphna Cusack, Sydney, Thomas Nelson (Australia) Limited, 1975. Pp. vi + 200, 22 photograph illustrations, $11.95.

Abstract

This work is a biography, written by the author's husband, who interviewed her at various times from 1964 to 1974, and from the results wrote this book. Norman Freehill, long a working journalist, and author of such works as 'Banks of Australia' and 'China - All About It', has not written a normal biography, nor yet any form of critical exposition. In many ways, this survey is an account of the genesis of the many books which have roused so many people to a compassion for the victims of social neglect and injustice. While it is perhaps the only book on Dymphna Cusack which we may have for some time, it still leaves room for further treatment of her life and creative writings. In structure the book is most biographical for the period up to 1940, and the bulk of the subsequent material is of the countries lived in during 20 years of wandering - England, France, Italy, China, Albania, Germany, Poland, North Korea, Hungary, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Ireland - and the way in which the setting called forth her writing. Yet, with the exception of 'Heatwave in Berlin', the stimulus of the new countries and cultures and the deepening understanding of the common problems of humanity which these gave, the books were largely about Australia and the issues there which her mind had gone over and over, and was suddenly ready to handle creatively.