A Respectable Girl
Author(s): Fleur Beale
A Young Adult historical romance novel set in both New Zealand and England during the 19th century. The main character is Hannah, a strong Elizabeth Bennett-like personality, who lives in Taranaki with her father, twin brother, Maori step-mother and step-brother during the time of the land wars. Hannah and her twin, Jamie, travel to England, for a number of reasons - one of which is to find the family of their dead mother. There they encounter the culture shock of upper-class English county behaviour. In Hannah's search for her own identity and for the truth about the mother she has never known,she needs all her stubborn independence to survive. There are many fascinating aspects to the book: the Pakeha/Maori racial clash of the time; a young teenager's growing knowledge of the world around her - romance, marriage, work, the purpose of life, racism, death; the striking differences between the freedom of New Zealand and the constraints of England. A Respectable Girl is rich, full of detail, suspenseful, strong on character, has an excellent sense of place and it retains its secret until the final pages. First published 2006.
Product Information
Shortlisted for New Zealand Post Children's Book Award: Senior Fiction 2007.
Fleur Beale has written 27 books for children and young adults, and has won many awards. She was born in Inglewood, Taranaki where some of her forebears settled when they emigrated from England in the nineteenth century. This book begins in New Plymouth in 1859. She did much of the research for it from Oxford in England where she lived for a year. She found it a surreal experience to be sitting in the Bodlean Library in the 21st century reading via the internet, the newspapers from New Plymouth of that era.
General Fields
- :
- : Random House New Zealand Ltd
- : Random House New Zealand Ltd
- : 0.33
- : 03 March 2006
- : 198mm X 128mm
- : New Zealand
- : books
Special Fields
- : Fleur Beale
- : Paperback
- : 352
- : Teenage romance; Historical fiction
