www.sundayterritorian.com.au Sunday Territorian, Sunday, December 6, 2009 — 35

Britain’s Maralingadisaster revisited

By LUCY CLARK

YOU can always tellwhen a writer is clearlyaffected by a place:

their writing comes alive withcolour and detail and thescene fills out in allthree dimensions.

So it is with Maralinga andJudy Nunn.

While the latest in her longline of Australian bestsellersopens in the pale damp ofrural England, the core ofNunn’s story in Maralinga(Random House, $32.95) isin the desert of outbackAustralia, and for these vividpassages you’ll need yourmetaphorical sunglasses.

The dust, the red dirt, thescrub, the extreme beautyand harsh colours: Nunntravelled to the former site ofthe secret British atomicweapons testing ground inSouth Australia as part of herresearch — and it shows.

For the book, set in the1950s, Nunn imagined thenow-deserted army baserepopulated with the menwho came here tosecretly test atomicweapons in a land they saidwas uninhabited.

But we start in England,where we are introduced tothe book’s main character,Elizabeth Hoffman, a youngwoman we meet in theSurrey home of her eccentricparents. Spirited, intelligent,and delightfully unfettered bythe era’s low expectations ofwomen, Elizabeth is on trackto become a journalist, but tobe the journalist she wants tobe (not one who coversflower shows and fashionparades) she has to play aman’s game.

About this time she meets

Daniel Gardiner, a youngBritish lieutenant with whomshe ultimately falls in love andis engaged to, until Danaccepts a 12-month postingto Maralinga on a promise ofrapid promotion.

This first part of the bookin England runs for 135pages. It forms the basis forthe Maralinga story, settingup the characters and thesituation nicely, but it isoverly long.

However, once the actionmoves to South Australia, thetrue intrigue begins. Whensomething goes terriblywrong for Daniel, Elizabethtravels to South Australia touncover the truth.

Nunn explores all theelements that madeMaralinga such a disasterand a travesty of justice: theBritish callousness andarrogance in choosing an‘‘uninhabited’’ spot, theinnocence of the youngsoldiers unwittingly exposedto dangerous irradiation and,in moving passages, theAboriginal perspective.

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NTNE-WS-DA-TE:6-DEGE:35 CO-LO-R: C-M Y-K

H win H winners H win HChance to win a great readONCE again, it’s time for the Sunday

Territorian to stock your library. We havethree books to win: The Australian Light

Horse by Roland Perry, The Hawke

Legacy by Bloustien, Comber andMackinnon, and Big Book of Verse for

Aussie Kids by Jim Haynes.For a chance to win, cut out the

picture of the cover and send it, with

your contact name, address and

daytime phone number to: BOOK’S

NAME (the book you want), c/- SundayTerritorian, PO Box 1401, Darwin,

0801. Entries by last mail Thursday.

Multiple entries permitted but no

photocopies. Last week’s winners:

Carli Williams (Kill The Fuhrer), R.M.

Lenoir (Evermore) R. Darling

(Brothers and Sisters) and Prue King

(Italian Favourites).

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It also includes tips, anecdotesand notes on the origins of thedrink names.

FOR your chance to win this greatbook, thanks to our friends at Angusand Robertson Darwin, cut out thepicture of the book and send it,along with your name, address anddaytime phone number, to BrandyCocktails, c/- Sunday Territorian, POBox 1401, Darwin, NT 0801, by lastmail on Thursday.

top10 list

1 A Song In The Daylight

Paulina Simons

2 Story of Danny Dunn

Bryce Courtenay

3 The Five Greatest

Warriors

Matthew Reilly

4 I, Alex Cross

James Patterson

5 The Silent Country

Di Morrissey

6 Under The Dome

Stephen King

7 The Girl Who Kicked

The Hornets Nest

Stieg Larsson

8 The Gathering Storm

Jordan and Sanderson

9 The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown

10 Meltdown

Ben Elton

top 5non-fiction1 Ray: Stories Of My Life

Ray Martin

2 Bart: My Life

J.B. Cummings

3 Open

Andre Agassi

4 The Truth Hurts

Carey and Happell

3 Never Mind Bollocks:

Here’s Science

Karl Kruszelnicki

top 5 children’s

1 Eclipse

Stephenie Meyer

2 Twilight

Stephenie Meyer

3 New Moon

Stephenie Meyer

4 Where The Wild

Things Are

Maurice Sendak

5 Crocodile Tears

Anthony Horowitz

. . . BOOK BITES . . .A SONG IN THE DAYLIGHT

Paullina Simons (HarperCollins, $32.99)

SIMONS has a good feel for domesticscandal, which she knows holds theattention of the women’s fiction market.In this 767-page doorstop, she travelsfrom New Jersey to the slums of Manila tothe Australian Outback, but she fails tomake her selfish heroine likable enough.

UNDER THE DOME

Stephen King(Hodder & Stoughton, $34.99)

ONLY a handful of authors regularly enter

the New York Times bestseller list atNo. 1, and King is one of them.He did it again last week with this newbook, in which he returns to hissupernatural roots with a story about asmall Maine town suddenly andinexplicably sealed off from the rest of theplanet by an invisible force field.The race against time is on as resourcesdwindle and the citizens team up to findout who or what is responsible.As always, King treads the linebetween good and evil with aplomb anda healthy imagination.