Great read. I really enjoyed. An Australian girls' life around joining the League of Nations. ( )

This is a really wonderful book. There's a clarity and precision to the prose which I haven't seen in any other Australian novel. Too often Australian writers aim for the vernacular and use a style that tries to imitate speech. Moorhouse, on the other hand, seems to acknowledge that written fiction has its own discourse and trusts that an Australian style will emerge without having to reach for it. Consequently we get a lucid description of events and a wonderful insight into the mind of the protagonist, Edith Campbell Berry.

Edith starts a job with the League of Nations and the story follows her adventures from there. This setting provides a great opportunity for reflection on big questions such as idealism vs. pragmatism, war vs. peace and other less grandiose questions which it's hard to discuss without spoiling the story. The greatest spoiler of all, of course, is that history tells us that the League of Nations was a failure and that World War II broke out not long after the events in the novel. A quick read of the wikipedia entry on the League of Nations will provide helpful background if you didn't study modern history at high school, as many of the events and characters in the story are based on real life. This history also lends a tragic poignancy to the attempts of Edith and her colleagues to put an end to war.

I really enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to anyone, especially book groups, who will find a multitude of material to discuss. ( )

Great writing marred by a poor plot that goes from the predictable (the ex-British Foreign Office diplomat who likes to dress up in women's clothes) to the implausible (the heroine meets the only straight man in a cross-dressers club who also just happens to be the Ambassador of a govt in exile!!).
Read in Samoa Mar 2003 ( )

Interesting story and interesting historical background. It was more a series of vignettes. Good descriptions. Strange introspections. ( )

Over the pre-Christmas weeks, there was the usual flurry of lists of best reads of 2011. One title appearing highly recommended on several reliable lists was a new Frank Moorhouse – the third in his series on the League of Nations. I bought the the first one (Grand Days) about fifteen years ago; and the second one (Dark Palace) when it was released in 2000. ‘Dark Palace’ won the Miles Franklin that year. There was a huge fuss because, while it is about an Australian, it is not actually set in Australia and that was really pushing the boundaries of the award criteria – and you know how the luvvies work themselves into a state about things like that!

They are HUGE (both over 700 pages) and very earnest seeming from the blurbs - you know, the sort of thing one thinks one should read - eventually. They've both been sitting on Mt TBR awaiting an appropriate moment.

The recommendations - and a sense that I should read at least one ‘worthy’ thing over the break instead of all escapist fantasy and mindless crime thrillers - prompted me to bite the bullet. I selected a larger handbag on Thursday, hefted ‘Grand Days’ into it; and headed off into town for a round of personal wellbeing appointments - the hairdresser, the optometrist etc.

Well, despite its weight, I couldn’t put the bloody thing down. I was so enthralled I didn’t even get grumpy at being kept waiting long past scheduled appointment times.

It is the mid 1920s and a young Australian diplomat, Edith Campbell Berry, arrives in Geneva to take up a role with the newly established League of Nations. Berry leaves home as an impractical idealist and ends up as a somewhat jaded, but still idealistic, international bureaucrat. She has to be one of the most interesting characters I've come across in years - and the world she lives in feels as real as the one I inhabit.

I finished it at 3am on New Years Eve; and promptly searched out the second on Mt TBR. It took sheer willpower not to start it there and then and turn the light off. ( )