Why a Booktrail?
1930s: An art circle which becomes a commune and an escape from the real world.
The Strays
What you need to know before your trail
On her first day at a new school, Lily meets Eva, one of the daughters of the infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. He and his wife are attempting to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work with them at their family home. Lily’s friendship with Eva grows, and she becomes infatuated with this unusual set up and really wants to be part of it.
Years later, Lily realises that this utopian existence was very much like something out of one of Evan Trentham’s paintings. Faustian bargains and terrible recompense, yet it was not Evan, nor the other artists he gathered around him, but his own daughters, who paid the debt that was owing.
Travel Guide
1930s Melbourne and the art scene
An artist’s colony in 1930s Melbourne. A fictional account of a colony of misfits, strays who come to life all in one house with a popular artist in his very unconventional house where social mores either didn’t have a place or were given a new one.
The author has staid that her book was influenced by the Heide circle around John and Sunday Reed, but is not based on it.
The Heide story at the Heide Museum
In this artistic home, art is everything and everything against convention or the norm. Lily, from her normal conventional home comes to stay here and is enchanted by it all – the freedom, the way of doing things, the sense that this commune was united against the world outside of it. The artistic temperament is central here and the idea and indeed reality of it is intoxicating.
‘In a house, as in a garden, there is a point when over-mingling can occur.’
This book really captures and evokes a unique art scene – the Melbourne bohemian art scene of the 30’s that even if you have never heard of it nor had experience of, you’ll feel as captivated as if you were there.
Streetview Maps
A) Melbourne - Heide Museum
B) Melbourne - Flinders St Station
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Strays
Author/Guide: Emily Bitto Destination: Melbourne Departure Time: 1930s
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