Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024, Restless Dolly Maunder is veteran Kate Grenville’s latest novel. In this historical fiction she reimagines the story of her grandmother’s life.

Dolly Maunder grows up on a rural farm but when she realises that the hard work and daily struggle of her mother and older sisters will be her future, even when she marries on to another farm, she decides she wants a different life.

Dolly strives to become a teacher, but her father won’t allow it. So instead, following her marriage, she persuades her husband to invest in businesses - running shops, bars and hotels in an attempt to move up in the world. Along the way Dolly has children, but she isn’t naturally maternal, struggling to connect with them and always focused on her next business venture. Similarly she doesn’t connect with her husband, and soon after discovering his indiscretions, works to avoid him as much as she can, resigned to the fact that she cannot leave him. Even the men she falls for, she is wary of, aware that there cannot be an equal partnership between them. Dolly is eternally dissatisfied with her life and place as a woman, and her actions constantly rail against this.

So ‘Restless’ Dolly keeps upping and moving her family, constantly moving on to the next thing, much to the dismay of her husband and children. The novel captures the changing times of the early 20th Century as Dolly fights for her place in the world. It certainly feels episodic, each time she moves, and at times possibly a little repetitive in it’s structure. Just when we think Dolly might have ‘made it’ or settled down for her happy ending, the force of history catches up with her, with the global crash of 1929 and the war years taking their toll. Being based on a true story means there is no romanticising the plotline. The characters are at the mercy of reality and it’s often bleak.

Dolly is a dry, practical character. She is hard to relate to, only realizing those connections with those she loves when it is far too late. Of course she has to forge her life in an incredibly unfair patriarchal society, which might elicit some reader sympathy but makes Dolly hard and firm in her views. While it’s no surprise that a world like this might make someone bitter, it becomes relentless, and a little one-dimensional for Dolly’s character, we don’t really get to see her complexities.

Restless Dolly Maunder is certainly an interesting read - particularly recounting a perspective we might not otherwise encounter, from a woman in rural Australia during this time. However, it’s a bleak novel, which lays bare the stark realities and struggles of one woman’s life, without much tenderness or hope.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for fiction.

This is a fictional account of Greenville’s maternal grandmother. Dolly Maunder was born in 1881 in rural NSW. She enjoyed school and excelled there but had to leave the day she turned 14 to work on the farm - to the drudgery of a woman’s world. She finds a way out of the farm and bit by bit makes a better life for herself.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this story of Dolly Maunder, a great insight into life through the early 1900s and what it meant to be a woman then. The writing was engaging, Dolly such an energetic person who felt suppressed and her story of her life and how it all played out. If you like historical fiction I’d highly recommend.

I quickly became engrossed in Kate Grenville’s tale of her grandmother’s life. She portrays a woman of unbreakable spirit when her gender, religion and class all conspire to limit and constrain her life but not her hopes and dreams. Dolly is a complex character and this account of her and her life is neither sentimental or forgiving but is a fascinating glimpse in to how society has changed in just a few decades.
Thanks to Netgalley and Canongate for the opportunity to read an early copy of the book.

I loved this portrait of a woman born into 1880s rural Australia and constrained by her family’s relentless poverty and the limitations imposed on women.
But that makes it sound dull, whereas Dolly is a bold and vibrant character, and we have the privilege of seeing into her soul.
Dolly is also Grenville’s grandmother and it’s so interesting to understand what lies behind an apparently stern and unloving woman.
You can always be sure of Grenville’s writing too, and this is beautifully written - understated and lyrical.
I would really recommend this novel: it’s not big and showy but it will appeal to readers with a curiosity into what makes people tick, in a really interesting setting of rural Australia.

I'm surprised this book has received so many plaudits and been put on lists for book awards. I found it rather trying. Dolly Maunder, although based on the author's grandmother follows the of trodden road of being a story about a poor but fierecely intelligent girl who pulls herself out of poverty. However, plucky Dolly is pretty awful to have as a close relative and she doesn't seem to have much charater growth or insight.

Beautiful writing and poignant story. Dolly Maunder shows you what woman can achieve when they put their mind to it.

Unfortunately this one really wasn't for me. My full review is included in my Women's Prize Reading Vlogs, Part 3!

Dolly Maunder, born in late 19th century Australia, has ambition and wants a life beyond the rural setting in which she grew up. She was required to go to school which awoke a desire for a bigger, freer life and we travel with her as she tries to make that happen. But, often, she can't escape the limits placed on women in that time and, perhaps more importantly, her lack of ability to connect with those closest to her.

This book, based on the author's own grandmother, was a thought-provoking read.

Dolly was the author's grandmother and this is the story of her life, from very poor beginnings, through two world wars and the depression.
Dolly's life moves so fast that the reader doesn't have time to engage with where she is at, before Dolly moves house and career yet again. While reading, I kept waiting for the story to begin... However I realise that this is the point - her life is her story, not one big event to write about but the sum of hundreds of decisions and regrets. In the end, I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot about life as an ambitious but downtrodden woman at the turn of the 20th century.
"She just wanted to be a woman with the same freedom to choose that a man had".

Restless Dolly Maunder is Greenville’s fictionalised account of her grandmother’s life. Born at the end of the 19th century Dolly is part of a new generation, and this is an attempt to examine the elements that made up her life.
Grenville is keen to point out that Dolly is nothing special. She is a woman like so many, born at a time of change and trying to make the most of her experiences.
From her early years to the closing stages of her life we see the world Dolly inhabits and come to understand her. At many points in time we see Dolly is not without faults. Strong-willed and prone to selfishness, there’s a strength to this character that often makes her seem cold. I’m fairly sure that the stories told to Grenville by her family will have influenced her portrayal, but it’s a fascinating story.
Not only do we gain an understanding of the character, it was interesting to see the historical backdrop and how it impacted on her life,

Kate Grenville’s latest book Restless Dolly Maunder is the fictional account of her maternal grandmother’s life, she has childhood memories of an aloof, stern, thin, cranky woman and she always wondered what made her that way.

Sarah Catherine Maunder (Dolly) was born in 1881 on a farm near Currabubula, New South Wales, her father Thomas cared more about his sheep than he did about his wife and seven children. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, by law all children had to attend school until they turned fourteen, Dolly wanted to be a teacher, her father informed she was going to stay home, help her mother, and until she got married.

Dolly wanted more, her mother’s life was hard, never ending backbreaking chores, cooking, cleaning, washing and mending and putting up with her husband’s moods. Dolly vows her own children will receive a good education, boys and girls, it’s the only way to escape poverty and get ahead.

Dolly was driven, she didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife, she was obsessed with making money and she and her husband Bert ran and owned various businesses. The family moved countless times, Dolly would get restless, she thought they could do better and her daughter Nance lost count of how many school she attended.

I received a copy of Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville from Canongate Books and NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased and honest review. Using childhood memories and notes from her mother Nance Russell, Ms. Grenville crafts an interesting narrative about being a woman in Australia in the late 1880's and into the 1950’s.

Dolly was restricted by society’s expectations of women’s roles, most men thought education was a waste of time for their daughters, it was hard to be a female in an Aussie man’s world and Dolly did her best to push the boundaries and overcome obstacles and hardship. A story about an inspirational woman, I really admired Dolly’s tenacity, she loved her children in her own way and Dolly did her best, spoke up and didn’t worry about what people thought. I highly recommend this book, it gives the reader an idea of what it was like for the average Australian woman, and five stars from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this highly anticipated novel!

For a highly self-entitled novel, I really enjoyed this! 😂

Dolly Maunder is born in the late 1800s to a farming family in New South Wales. She gets to go to school, but only until she is fourteen. Smart and bright, Dolly wants to become a teacher, but her father refuses (exclaiming “over my dead body”!), and so Dolly begins adult life working on the farm. After a few failed love interests, she marries a Bert Russell at the age of 28, and they take over a nearby farm. Three children and years of failed crops later, Dolly has had enough.

She moves her family down towards Sydney, where she and Bert take over the lease of a shop. Success leads to taking over a pub, then a boarding house… every few years moving on to another property when Dolly becomes restless again. Her children resent each move, but the family thrives nonetheless… until the Second World War comes to their corner of the world.

At the end of this novel, which spans Dolly’s whole life, Kate Grenville tells the story of how she came to write this novel - it is based on the life of her grandmother. Knowing this made this book all the more interesting to me, and knowing that Dolly pushed against the boundaries that held her back as a woman was inspiring to say the least. She was a force of nature and her will and determination set her family along a path that wasn’t originally set out for them. She constantly pushed for her daughter Nance to have opportunities that Dolly herself did not have, and though that negatively impacted upon their mother-daughter relationship, you can see Dolly’s passion to give Nance the things she had always wanted.

Let me be clear: Dolly is not always a likeable character. She puts herself and her own desires above that of others, including her own family, and she is never content with her current situation. She is ruthless, selfish and insensitive at times, but she is also driven and clever and determined to make better for herself and her family, even at the detriment of her relationships with them. She constantly hits upon the challenges of being a woman in this period of time, when the only thing a woman was considered as being able to do was a housewife and a mother. For someone to want more than that life yet be continually denied it through societal norms… well I found Dolly pretty admirable for pushing back against that. I found her a fascinating character to follow - complex and almost too modern for her time.

It’s my 3rd read for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, and so far it’s my favourite!

Read as had been longlisted for Women's Prize 2024. Not my usual read.

Felt like was frantically following a selfish, disattached woman who didn't want a family & wanted to live a sole life with her business's, her poor children & grandchildren.

Not a book to loose yourself in or settle a busy mind. Not a book for me.

Dolly Maunder is one of the younger children of a family living in a small Australian town in the late 19th century. Unlike her older brothers and sisters, she gets the chance of an education and proves to be very bright, but her bullying father refuses to let her stay on at school to become a teacher and instead makes her leave at 14 to help at home. The rest of the novel tells of Dolly straining against the expectations placed on her and fighting to improve her lot in life.

The book is a novel but based as closely as can be on the life of the author’s grandmother, using archive material and conversations with the author’s mother (Dolly’s daughter). Dolly herself is an intriguing character, never really likeable but very impressive. Her frustration at the limits placed on women is clear and it’s a real insight into how difficult it was for women to change their circumstances (my own great grandmother was born in the north of Scotland at a similar time and it’s fascinating to see how alike their lives were). The grind of the everyday work, the sheer amount of time and effort it all took, the limited choices and lack of opportunity to make decisions for yourself, or have a way out when needed, is beautifully portrayed.

This is the first work by Kate Granville that I’ve read and I loved it, her writing is so natural and she manages to make many deeper points about society without ever taking away from the story, which was completely engrossing. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of her work.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

I have loved Kate Grenville since I read 'Joan Makes History' when it first came out. Since then I've become an expat Australian who reads Grenville out of loyalty and homesickness. She builds the smells and sounds of Australia with authenticity and without cliché and I can almost feel the warmth of the 'sunburnt country' that she lovingly builds.
Ostensibly this is another of her great Historical Fiction novels about wonderfully strong, slight rebellious nineteenth and early twentieth century women. However, this has a biographical element as well. Dolly Maunder is Grenville's grandmother, her mother's mother and she has a couple of vague memories of the grumpy old woman who came to stay with her family when she was still small. In the afterward, she recounts having done a lot of research into her maternal relatives when she wrote about her mother in 2015. But what she found out and her mother's memories did not fully gel. Grenville guessed there needed to be more to this distant, restless woman who seemed so disconnected from her daughter.
What has resulted is a brilliantly imagined story of her grandmother fighting the colonial destiny of her foremothers. Marriage and motherhood was her assigned lot and restless Dolly Maunder (Russell) fought back against it. She was clever, routinely winning 'Star of the Week' in the government school that new laws meant that she had to attend until she was fourteen. At this age, she was desperate to train as a teacher but 'over my dead body' was her father's reply. No daughter of his was going out to work when there was so much to do on the farm. And so Dolly's fortune was apparently sealed.
But this closed small life was not what she wanted and her ambition and drive see her and her family travel around New South Wales in search of greater and greater economic challenges. They buy a shop and then a boarding house, and then a series of pubs. But along the way she worries that he raising is influencing the way that she is raising her own children.
A brilliantly compelling novella of family and one woman's ambition to experience more of life that she's allowed to.
Highly recommended.

Born at the end of the 19th century, Dolly Maunder was born at a time when women were just starting to have more social mobility. In the face of her poor childhood on a farm in New South Wales, Dolly consistently tries her best to break through the increasingly frail barriers on her way to finding independence and fulfilment.

I think the fact that Dolly Maunder was the author's grandmother really shines through the story because the writing has so much tenderness and sympathy for her, despite Dolly not being a particularly warm character. Although I did read Grenville's closing words, I'm still unsure how much is fiction and how much is family legend. One thing that really stood out for me was the connection between her very restricted, sheltered beginnings and her insatiable wanderlust and search for something new. She is constantly wanting to move on from her situation -even when it's very comfortable- and I think that's a hangover from when she couldn't escape her father's farm.

In some ways, it's a tragic story of a woman who was never satisfied with her lot but in other ways, it's a celebration of a woman of her time. It was really inspiring to see that Dolly's daughter (Grenville's mother) did manage to juggle a career and family in a way that Dolly never could. It certainly ends on a hopeful note that women will continue to flourish.

'Restless Dolly Maunder' is an outstanding work of historical fiction by Kate Grenville which is once again based on her family history - in this instance, her own grandmother of whom she has only distant memories. It follows Dolly as she refuses to be confined by the social constraints of early 20th Century Australia.

Kate Grenville is one of my favourite Australian authors, and she has a way of bringing history to life. I enjoyed this depiction of her grandmother's life, with all the constraints women faced at the time, as well as the difficulties of living through two world wars and the Depression. Due to class and religion, she ends up in a less than ideal marriage and the consequences that follow from that impact on her children. Her drive and ambition for herself and her children was amazing. I am always glad that I was born in this time and had so many opportunities, and it is good to be reminded that not everyone has been or is that lucky. Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy to review.

'Restless Dolly Maunder' is another outstanding work of historical fiction by Kate Grenville which is once again based on her family history - in this instance, her own grandmother of whom she has only distant memories (a young Grenville appears at the very end of the novel.) This is a quietly captivating novel which follows Dolly as she refuses to be confined by the social constraints of early 20th Century Australia.

We thus follow Dolly's quest for independence through her childhood, marriage and motherhood as she continues to pursue opportunities that will give her some measure of freedom. After a while we notice a pattern, as when ever Dolly achieves a measure of success, she refuses to rest on her laurels but instead becomes 'restless' and looks for new ways to show her family and the rest of society what she is capable of. Dolly and her family face a number of challenges, not least the economic turmoil caused by the Great Depression, and the novel also explores the emotional consequences of Dolly's ambition and restlessness through her relationships with her husband and her children.

I found this an utterly compelling novel, full of vibrant historical detail which enabled us to imagine the daily realities of Dolly and so many other women's lives. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an ARC to review.