NEW RELEASE
Tiddas - Anita Heiss (2014)
Five lifelong friends meet up for book club once a month but spend more time discussing their lives and issues. TV presenter Izzy dreams of becoming the Australian Oprah but didn't count on falling pregnant. Her sister-in-law, Nadine, is a bestselling author but has trouble staying away from the bottle. Xanthe is happily married but desperate to start a family, mother of three Veronica is trying to find her place in the world after her husband left her, and funeral celebrant Ellen is getting fed up explaining that she's perfectly happy playing the field. Like all Anita Heiss books, the story touches on many issues central to Aboriginal lives - from the stolen generation and land rights to the importance of family and community. The storyline skips around between the tiddas (an Aboriginal word for sisters) without pattern so comes across as a little haphazard. I also found it difficult to relate to the characters, mainly because of the way their cultural heritage impacts so heavily on every single aspect of their lives.
Tiddas, by Anita Heiss, focuses on what it means to be a friend. The summary says: "Five women, best friends for decades, meet once a month to talk about books ... and life, love and the jagged bits in between. Dissecting each other's lives seems the most natural thing in the world - and honesty, no matter how brutal, is something they treasure. Best friends tell each other everything, don't they? But each woman harbours a complex secret and one weekend, without warning, everything comes unstuck. Izzy, soon to be the first black woman with her own television show, has to make a decision that will change everything. Veronica, recently divorced and dedicated to raising the best sons in the world, has forgotten who she is. Xanthe, desperate for a baby, can think of nothing else, even at the expense of her marriage. Nadine, so successful at writing other people's stories, is determined to blot out her own. Ellen, footloose by choice, begins to question all that she's fought for. When their circle begins to fracture and the old childhood ways don't work anymore, is their sense of sistahood enough to keep it intact? How well do these tiddas really know each other?" Tiddas is out in March 2014.