Reviewed by Richard Tutin
When Australian radio was in its “Golden Age” during the 1940s and 50s, one of the mainstays of programming were drama plays and serials. People gathered around the sets of the day to listen to their favourite shows. They were keen to find out more about the fortunes of their favourite characters in much the same way that we watch our much-loved television shows today.
Victoria Purman captures this period in The Radio Hour that centres on a new radio serial As the Sun Sets being produced for the ABC. The new serial aims to follow in the footsteps of the highly successful Blue Hills by Gwen Meredith that was broadcast for many years from 1949 to 1976. By combining real history with fictional characters and situations, Purman produces a seamless context for what unfolds as the novel progresses.
Martha Berry, the central character, highlights one of the most interesting facts of this period of radio life. Women, such as Gwen Meredith at the ABC and, in commercial radio, Grace Gibson were the main players in the production of serials that became part of listeners’ lives touching as they often did on issues of the day as well as crossing the boundaries between fiction and real life. This was done in an atmosphere of male domination and discrimination against women whose talents were equal if not better than the men they worked with.
The new serial called As the Sun Sets is the background for Martha Berry’s ascension from secretary to the serial’s secret script writer due to the incompetence of the young egotistical producer. As the book’s plot unfolds, we see how she develops as a person from one who has worked behind the scenes for many years without much recognition or reward to having a more open understanding of her talents and worth.
The ways in which Martha progresses her ideas despite the limitations imposed by both the producer and the ABC hierarchy make interesting reading as does the inclusion the text of some of the scripts that came from her typewriter as she kept to deadlines and made sure her ghost-writing talents remained hidden. Along the way she offers support and encouragement to younger ABC colleagues.
Purman gives us an intricate weaving of the storyline along with a diverse and often eclectic band of characters who come together to produce a show that is the urban equivalent of the famous Blue Hills. The plot gives a voice to the concerns and opinions of women of the period whose lives were often ignored or taken for granted. The Radio Hour is more than a story about a radio serial. It reminds us that the issues women faced in that period are as relevant today as they have ever been. It shows that there is still a way to go before we can honestly say that gender equality is real and has been achieved.
VICTORIA PURMAN is an Australian top ten and USA Today bestselling fiction author. Her most recent book, A Woman’s Work, was an Australian bestseller, as were her novels The Nurses’ War, The Women’s Pages, The Land Girls and The Last of the Bonegilla Girls. Her earlier novel The Three Miss Allens was a USA Today bestseller. She is a regular guest at writers festivals, a mentor and workshop presenter and was a judge in the fiction category for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the 2022 ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize for an unpublished manuscript.
The Radio Hour
by Victoria Purman
(2024)
Harper Collins
ISBN 978 186720 776 4
$32.99; 380pp