Iris

Iris Webber, who really lived in 1930s Sydney, tells her story from Long Bay, the women's reformatory, where she is waiting to be tried. Alternating chapters show how she got there: raised in country New South Wales and unhappily married, she reaches Sydney at the end of 1932, when the Depression has left little work for women. She lives by cons and shoplifting, sex work and playing the accordion in the street, and she can use a gun. Everything shifts when she meets Maisie Matthews, a young sex worker, but in a city that punishes queer love even among outcasts, violence seems the only road ahead. Around her teems a crooked underworld of gamblers, hoodlums and sellers of illegal liquor.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Crime, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, 1930s

First published

2022

Author's age

57 when first published

ISBN

9781760787684 (Picador Australia, Australia)