Summer at Mount Hope

 
It took a while but it only dawned on me when I was well into this book that the fictional Mount Hope is in my own current backyard which, although never clearly delineated, is the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong, Victoria, Australia, an area now well-known for its vineyards.
 
At the time this book is set, however, the summer of 1893/94, growing grapes was an irregular and risky venture for a farmer. Phoeba’s father Robert has the faith and he believes that sheep and wool are no longer the backbone of the country. This is borne out as the novel progresses; a progress that is at times slow as the bay waves that lap the shore, although this is not a book to gallop through and it needs to be savoured.
 
It is the social climbing that is the main focus of the book, all told with black and quirky humour. The star for me is Spot, the horse who is literally drawn to water, and some of the lesser characters are equally appealing, including the wacky maiden Aunt Margaret and the ill-used mail boy called Freckle. The historical research and references are excellent and give a strong sense of time and place.
 
Phoeba Crupp does remind one a little of Sybylla Melvyn, the heroine in Miles Franklin’s “My Brilliant Career”, who was another independently minded young woman trying to deal with the monotony and drudgery of life on the land in the burgeoning suffragette era of the 1890s.
 
The expectation is that Phoeba will marry Hadley Pearson, literally the boy next door, but she is chafing at the bit to experience more of life and her ambition is to be a vigneron on her own account. Her best friend is Hadley’s sister, Henrietta, but she isn’t fond of her own sister Lilith who is vain and flighty with her eye on the local rich widower, Marius Overton, and her mother Maude is overblown in all senses of the word, including furniture and hats. Her father Robert is long-suffering. Just one classic example:-
 
Robert settled his new hat onto his head. It was a pith hat and looked very silly.
‘Farmers don’t wear pith hats, Robert,’ said Maude.
‘I am not a farmer,’ said Robert. ‘I am a vigneron.’
Maude put her hand to her temple. ‘You are the cause of my headaches, Robert.’ She drifted inside taking the social pages with her.
 
When Phoeba encounters the attractive new Overton manager Rudolph Steel, she has a lot of thinking to do about what she really wants out of life vs. her obligations. The ending almost seems predictable at one point until there’s a surprising switch-about.
 
Four stars.

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