Penguin Books Australia

ISBN 9780143011477

As Mirabel watched him she couldn’t bear the thoughts creeping up on her. J J was in the Chinese army and his mission in Australia would one day be over. Then she would be just like the others, a girl left behind in the wake of war. I’m afraid,’ she whispered. ‘When the war ends…what’s going to happen to us? He put his arm around her and stroked her face. She knew he could not answer that question. But she wanted him to lie, to say that he would take her with him, that they would be together always.

Melbourne, 1946, and Mirabel is seventeen. She’s leaving school, designing dresses, falling in love. Then fate intervenes, her forbidden affair is discovered, and J J is posted back to China where a civil war is raging. Despite all warnings, Mirabel sets off for Shanghai to find him…

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Inspiration

Little Paradise was inspired by my mother who, as a young woman, grew up in Melbourne during the 30’s and 40’s when Australia and its people were coming of age. Much of what takes place in the novel sticks closely to the truth. But in other places, I used my imagination to meld fact and fiction. This is necessary to give a novel dramatic drive. Many people ask me which parts are real and which are invented and it’s very hard to say unless I’m asked a specific question. For example the Hiroshima scene was real but there was no Frogface Tan.

I have interlaced the real with the imaginary.

There is also a magical element – a soothsayer, a prediction written on an oracle bone:  ‘Dressing the dead, A treasure not wed, Lost on the sea, To fortune you’ll flee’.

REVIEWS

Little Paradise has been selected as one of Bookseller and Publisher’s top YA picks for March-May Children’s Reviews.

Gabrielle Wang’s new young adult novel contains many of the hallmarks readers have come to expect from her work––most typically, a strong emphasis on traditional Chinese culture. However, it is grander in scope than her previous novels, and has the feel of an epic wartime saga, spanning generations and continents. The fantastical element is also more subdued, just tangible enough to give the book a thrilling tinge of magic and destiny.

Leonie Jordan, Bookseller and Publisher

Chris Thompson, in a detailed review, says that Little Paradise

takes us on an emotional, touching and, at times, thrilling journey through aspects of our history that may for many of us, be unexplored … Beyond the enjoyment of the story, Gabrielle Wang’s new novel captures a strong sense of a pocket of our multi-cultural community whilst also offering us an opportunity to see that the act of ‘telling our own stories’ can also be an act of telling the stories of the world.

Chris Thompson, Viewpoint Magazine, March 2010

When Mirabel discovers she’s pregnant, she goes against her family’s wishes and sets sail from Australia to Shanghai to track down her boyfriend, a Chinese soldier she met when he was stationed in Melbourne in World War Two. Now in the midst of the Chinese civil war, Mirabel’s plight to live happily ever after is in grave danger unless she can find her lover and keep her baby safe.    Dolly, March 2010

Cover Portrait

I love this cover, especially so because it is an actual studio shot of my mum when she was 20. On the back cover is a fashion illustration that she did when she was just 14 years old. The end papers also feature my mum’s illustrations.

Here is the original photo the cover was taken from.

And here is a photo of her when she was 14 and a selection of drawings from her drawing book that she did around the same age.

My mother drew all the time as a child. When she left school she studied fashion illustration at RMIT. She didn’t want to study fashion design because, like in the novel, she couldn’t be bothered with learning how to draft patterns. All she wanted to do was design clothes.