Hurdy Gurdy us the third novel by Australian author, Jenny Ackland. A dystopian future Australia that doesn’t stretch the imagination all that far: “The infections and inquisitions, rumours of law changes and a strangled welfare system. Billionaires colonising the space stations. Our planet moving into extremity with heat events of fifty-degree days and fireflies arrived now in Tasmania. There are more households with generators than electricity running from wires.”

It's a place where “what was old is new again. There are land wanderers once more, they roam the country and do whatever they can to stay alive, they ask for work and sleep on bed rolls in the grass on roadsides. They strip wood and beg food, it’s tinkers and swaggies and bush cooks and shearers needing to get by. Travelling salespeople and tricksters and quacks selling oils and health juices”, and where nineteen-year-old Win travels around the country for part of the year with three other women and a girl in two vehicles, an old Bedford truck, and Queenie’s Mercedes. They are Gold’s Family Show.

They might just be the smallest show on Earth, but they have enough acts to attract an audience in each of the towns where they stop. There’s tumbling and juggling, also highwire; an eight-foot pedestal act and a comedy boxing act too; their Russian-born clown, Valentina does skits, the playlets, the social commentaries she calls them; bareback pony riding, a rope act, rings, and their finale is often Win’s high dive.

Win and Girl play the hurdies and, with Valentina, perform a clown act; the engineer looks after the vehicles and the gear, and constructs mechanimals they can operate from within; on the quiet, Ringmaster Queenie provides hairdressing (and something else they call reclamations) for women who need it. Lately, Queenie has added a free close shave for certain men. Pet, their Bengal Tiger, is well-fed. It does seem a bit naïve of Queenie to not consider that the disappearances of these men won’t be noted.

Queenie requires Win to learn this, to be ready to take over, and Win has mixed feelings about it, she has a firm theory about being good: “It’s not enough to be a little bit good, or only good to some people. You have to be good to everyone who deserves it all of the time and even to some of the people you think don’t deserve it, even to them as well. You have to be good for being good, because it’s the right thing to do. No one is perfect, no one can be good all the time. But you have to try.”

Queenie’s little group tries to keep to themselves and stay under the radar. They definitely avoid the Saviours, who are against alcohol and for babies. They encounter with Reverend Francis Abernathy Goldfinch Jones and his assistant, known only as Sister. The man preaches for temperance and against abortion, proving he is cut from the same cloth as the Saviours.

Sister, though, is a bit of an enigma: she allows Jones to believe he has corrected her thinking, attends to his every need and acts submissive, but remains inquisitive and keeps a notebook. When a father comes to Jones to report on the death of a daughter, Sister sees below the surface of his claims. But she accompanies Jones when he begins his dogged hunt for Queenie and her small band…

Ackland gives the reader some lovely descriptive rose. She sketches her characters using anecdotes about their lives which, unfortunately, leaves them lacking depth, although she does endow them with some profound philosophies. In her dystopian setting the gender divide is reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale while the social divide has a Hunger Games feel. Ackland omits quotation marks for speech, which will irritate some readers and her ending is long on ambiguity and short on resolution. The role of clowns is thoroughly explored in this thought-provoking, challenging read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.