Born marginalised, Iris is twice married, twice charged with murder in a vividly imagined 1930s Sydney, based (loosely) as she is on real-lfe Iris Webber, busker, sex worker, thief. Iris is mayhem of time and place in the underbelly of the city, threatening, violent, nonconformist. But the margins are also a place of friendship, love, loyalty and fun.
Iris survives. She has navigated the violence of life, defied police and the challenge of the street. But she is now trapped in a prison cell, forced to tread carefully with what she says to her lawyer. Being charged with murder Iris is hoping that her story matches with the evidence already provided.
Arriving in depression-hit Sydney in 1932 from the country town of Glen Innes in northern New South Wales, Iris has already had her share of imprisonment, marriage and domestic violence. Hay Women’s Prison was Iris’ most recent abode, having been arrested for shooting her husband as revenge for leaving her and for owing her mother money. She soon settles into the rough and ready King’s Cross and Darlinghurst neighbourhoods of East Sydney. She falls in love with fellow sex worker Maisie Matthews, struggling to understand this attraction but, Iris being Iris, she goes with the flow.
It’s a tough, humdrum world – a chaotic, corrupt one of brutal cops, sex workers, petty criminals, alcohol pedlars and gangsters. Allegiances are critical – particularly for the women, whether it be the madams such as Tilly Devine or Kate Leigh through to the men who protect them. Whilst in Iris the women take centre stage, it’s the men who determine the development of the narrative, with the women reliant upon those that are little more than thugs or on the take. Iris works to some degree outside that system – tough, independent, a lover of women (even though she does not feel a close affinity other than Maisie). There’s generally no avoiding men as protectors or bullies (gangsters or cops) in trying to keep a roof over her head (other than a short period when Iris escapes it all and lives for a while with a church-going aunt in Glebe), but as a rule Iris tries to follow her own determined path.
The narrative of Iris is hardly original – an underbelly of a city is well visited. As a result, the novel verges on repetition and predictability. But what sets McGregor’s novel apart is her extraordinary use of the vernacular of 1930s Sydney – a mindfuck of words, phrases and descriptors like no other, a veritable smorgasbord. Banana benders, bronza on full display, Jews ’avin a shivoo, bidgee angie, drabbest, oscar, cove, dagos, Rock Choppers, going yarra, rozzers, Celestials, Micks and Chinks. And so much more.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Miles Franklin Award, but lost out to Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran.
An Opinion or Two 