Chosen Family
by Madeleine Grey
Nell Argall and Eve Bowman were 12 years-old when they met in high school. Neither of them had parents who had the time or the inclination to pay attention to their daughters. Both were brilliant, odd and friendless, and their lives changed forever when they met.
Set in Sydney, Chosen Family follows Nell and Eve’s lives for the next eighteen years, from 2006 to 2024, from high school to university and into their careers and motherhood. By 2024, Eve is thirty; plaiting her young daughter’s hair and thinking that Nell should be by her side as they planned.
But Eve doesn’t know where Nell is. She had written a letter to Nell in 2023, but too much time had passed and she didn’t know where to send the letter, or even if she was alive.
Nell had been there when Eve was bullied at their all-girls school and called a dyke when she was aged thirteen. Remembering that Gray’s story is set in the 21st century, Eve wonders how her future sexual desire could produce such disgust and fear in others.
Eve carried her adolescent self-loathing for far too long but eventually came to terms with her sexuality. Her biggest fear was that when she got rid of the shame, it left a residue of cruelty that grew from all that shame and “stayed latched to her insides”.
Eve managed to establish a loving chosen family and Nell did become an important part of that life, but dark shadows of the past hovered over their relationship as love and joy competed with guilt and shame.
So what happened in the tumultuous years of high school and young adulthood? How did they both love and destroy each other?
Madeleine Grey’s simmering tale of desire is full of compassion for the two main characters, and the weight of historical barriers to that desire.
Lezly Herbert
