Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

Historical Fiction is a tricky genre.  The author has to do detailed research so that the period in history feels authentic while ensuring the story feels fresh and does read like a list of history facts piled one after another. The other complex issue comes when the story involves a timeslip. How will the character go back in time? how will the character return to their 'real life'? and most importantly what has happened to time itself?

In Playing Beatie Bow Abigail, a fourteen year old girl who lives with her mother in the Rocks area of Sydney, finds herself transported back to 1873. 

Blurb: "The game is called Beatie Bow and the children play it for the thrill of scaring themselves. But when Abigail is drawn in, the game is quickly transformed into an extraordinary, sometimes horrifying, adventure as she finds herself transported to a place that is foreign yet strangely familiar."

You can read a full plot description here.

Lets go back to my original questions:

Does the story feel authentic? Yes and Ruth Park calls on all our senses with her glorious descriptions of this area in 1873. Her book filled with richly researched scenes but it never feels like a history lesson:

"Stone steps ran up one side, and on the other two tottering stairways curled upon themselves, overhung with vines and dishevelled trees, and running amongst and even across roofs of indescribable shanties like broken down farm sheds. These dwellings were propped up with tree trunks and railway sleepers; goats grazed on their roofs,; and over all was the smell of rotting seaweed, ships, wood smoke, human ordure, horse and harness."

"the night was almost silent. There was no sound of traffic except a dray's wheels rolling like distant thunder over the cobbles at the docks. She could hear the waves breaking on the rocks of Dawes Point and Walsh Bay."

"The gutters, made of two tipped stones, were full of garbage. Abigail saw scaly tails twitching amongst the rotting debris and sprang away."

I also loved the way Ruth Park lets her reader hear the voices of Beatie and her family:

"I dunna ken what that means,' said Beatie gruffly, ' but I can tell by your mug it's no compliment. I'm telling you straight, I'll not have you come between them. I'll break your head first." 

How does the character move through time and what has happened to time during their absence? Abigail chases young Beatie Bow through the streets of the Rocks and as she races along the area transforms from 1980 to 1873. While she is running she hears the Town Hall clock - it is five thirty. Abigail spends many weeks or even several months with the Bow and Tallisker family but on her return she hears the last note of the half hour. This means time has stood still in the 'real world' but of course Abigail herself has changed both outwardly and more importantly inwardly. 

In a few weeks a group of friends and I have tickets to see a theatre production of Playing Beatie Bow so in preparation I just re-read this classic Australian young adult book. Playing Beatie Bow won the CBCA Children's Book of the Year award in 1981 and the Boston Globe-Horn Book award in 1982.

In my Primary school library teachers often asked to read Playing Beatie Bow to their class. I always said this book was more suitable for a High School audience which is why I have put Young Adult in my set of labels. Abigail is abducted in an area called Suez Canal. The people who take her have plans to use her in their prostitution business. Ruth Park vividly describes the women and their dependence on alcohol and other drugs. These are not scenes I would share with a younger child.

"A girl in a draggletail pink wrapper wandered over and looked at her curiously. She seemed half imbecile, with no front teeth and a nose with a flattened bridge. ... something soft and squashy moved beneath her. She realised with horror that it was a woman, a kind of woman, ... with tangled hay-like hair, cheeks bonfire red with either rouge or fever, and a body hung with parti-coloured rags."

I first read Playing Beatie Bow in 1981. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again forty years later. One thing that struck me this time is the way Ruth Park moves Abigail on from her fierce anger to a level of self realisation where she can feel true empathy for others.  The final scenes, back in 1980, do read a little like a fairy tale but I was so happy when Abigail found her one true love. Playing Beatie Bow is still in print. I hope the new edition (mine was from 1998) has a slightly larger font to give it a fresh look. The cover is the same as the one at the top of this post. I note it has 14 extra pages so I am hopeful that the print and white space are now more appealing.

Playing Beatie Bow has had many covers over the last 40 years including one I found in German: