Author: Thea Astley
Publisher: Melbourne: Minerva Australia, 1990.
Danielle Wickman, Australian Archives, contributed this review:
Belle is a local history librarian in Brisbane, Australia. While researching the archives [of] a middle-of-nowhere town called Jericho Flats she 'discovers' - and falls in love with - one of its citizens, Gaden Lockyer. Her research becomes an obsession, as she tries to make her path cross that of the long-dead Mr Lockyer:
"I am compiling a research diary on Gaden Lockyer, a private project since the research on Jericho Flats finished some time ago. I am involved in correspondence with the historical societies of at least six country towns, parliamentary record departments, three coastal newspapers whose morgues I wish to mine and, on a more personal level, an eighty-year-old shearer from Dingo with eyewitness anecdotes."
There is a nice but stereotypical quote about her work in the archives on p. 74:
"I am working in archives with a permanent smell of dust in my nostrils, that delicate fragrance of old paper and bindings, and I have permanently swollen olfactory glands. But life is better."
The Fictional World of Archives
Submitted by Danielle Wickman, 1997.02.04. Updated 1997.02.04.