This book calls to mind Sofie Laguna’s adult fiction told from the perspective of child narrators and recent European immigrant stories like Sofija Stefanovic’s Miss Ex-Yugoslavia. Past the Shallows had a grim setting in Tasmania but When the Night Comes ventured further: her characters meet in Hobart, but the novel includes scenes from Denmark and aboard Australia’s Antarctic vessel, the Nella Dan. Grandparents loom large in There Was Still Love the middle generation is strikingly absent. There Was Still Love is Favel Parrett’s third novel, and it shows her maturing style. She expertly inhabits the excitable and curious voice of Luděk to convey his sense of loss for an irretrievable past, the pain of separation and the scarcity of resources characterising Prague in the 1980s, while Malá Liška’s devotion to her grandparents doesn’t shield her from their trauma, the indignity of old age and the erasure of their identity in their loss of language and the Anglicisation of their names. Parrett’s prose is gentle and tender yet unflinching about the effects of intergenerational trauma and war so much is conveyed in so few words. Favel Parretts deep emotional insight and stellar literary talent shine through in this love letter to the strong women who bind families together, despite dislocation and distance. Its a story set in Melbourne and Prague, from 1938 to 1968 to 1980 and back again. The novel follows two sisters, each with a grandchild but living in two very different worlds. The novel oscillates in nearly every way-between the viewpoints of separated cousins Luděk and Malá Liška, between Prague and Melbourne, and between different timelines spanning from the 1930s to the 1990s-but this fragmented storytelling style never detracts from the deeply human story at its heart. Favel Parrettslatest novel There Was Still Love is based in part on her grandmothers story. Parrett’s third novel, There Was Still Love, is a meticulously observed and masterfully crafted immigrant story about a displaced Czech family.

There was still love favel parrett