The Red Shoe

The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky
Allen and Unwin. 2006


red shoes

stories of thoughts
and emotions
laced by
red shoes


think Dorothy
travelling in a parallel land
pushed into life by 
multiple tornado effects

Matilda craves her mother's red shoes

chance lets her  feel them
in the bush

but one is lost
when she climbs a tree


fresh echoes of war
creep 
intrude
like some angry ghost

madness
polio outbreak
nightmares
all framed by
the Petrov affair

newspaper clips
drift by

Elizabeth is brushed with a kind of madness
and cannot go to school

Frances
dreams of growing up
and loses the friend
she imagined she would marry some day

Mrs Petrov loses
a shoe
as she boards the plane


the girls' mother
receives a gift of red shoes
when her husband returns
again
from war nightmares

his brother Paul could not help him
but fortunately
the swinging rope
fails
this time


think post war 
loss
and stars
crossed

think the Land Oz
with many Dorothys

and red shoes


Linking to:
Poets United ~ Poetry Pantry

MY GOODREADS REVIEW

The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The scattered debris of post war worlds is all here. The headlines of the day cut into the home lives. Disturbingly, perspectives of home mirror the crises on larger scales. This is not a novel based on a traditional, linear narrative sequence. It is like mini memoirs co-existing spiced with flashbacks; mainly the memoirs of children growing up in a world they barely understand. The effect is mesmerising; a sense of sadness grappling with the right to find some kind of happiness - with a little help from some red shoes that could be magical.

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