Why did she keep repeating the same pattern, falling for these vicious, manipulative little men? And suddenly she remembered that time in Canberra, when a friend of hers, a composer, had been commissioned to write a serious post-modernist piece for the merry-go-round in the city square. You had to put on earphones to listen. All the respectable people paid to climb on board - politicians, university lecturers, civil servants, school teachers, social workers, clerks, all dressed up in their dark business suits, sitting very stiffly, circling round and round on those prancing wooden horses, listening without a smile. Sometimes she thought life was like that, circling round and round, repeating oneself, unsmiling listening.
(1993, Mcphee Gribble p 104)
Apart from the life lesson, a concert on a merry-go-round - especially the merry-go-round I had lunch next to most sunny days for about four years - sounds pretty exciting. Of course they'd have to have had done something about hurdy gurdy music.
*About which, I'm not entirley sure what to think until I get to the end and I'm really a bit anxious becuase I have a DREADFUL feeling the March-October romance (when the October is a wheelchair bound woman relying on an unreliable ex-con for practical help in an isolated house) is NOT going to end well for her but I got such a stern look from this woman on the bus this morning when I skipped to the last page to see if October was still alive (it's third person) that I decided I should keep myslef in suspense.
