Heddy and Me - Susan Varga

I notice, and not for the first time, that Mother glows when she talks of the war years, whereas her face fades and strains when we get to the present. Back then, the stage was large, and irrational forces dictated events. Now the wars are subtle and small and there is never a clear victory. Fighting your loved ones over well-worn territory. Fighting, in a way, over the outcome of those big years.?

Heddy and Me spans the twentieth century and some of its great upheavals: war, the holocaust, immigration.

In telling her mother's story, Susan Varga also tells her own. As a tiny baby she barely survived the holocaust, in hiding in a Hungarian village with her sister and mother, Heddy. Neither pain nor the devastation of this time lessened Heddy's will to go on and to recreate her life in Australia.

•... a seamless narrative. Varga's story of her mother and grandmother's life before and during the Nazi era is written with a classic simplicity and effortless flow..

MARY ROSE LIVERANI, The Australian

'This is a challenging, complex, rich, and above all, humane book. Into the process of creating it has gone great frankness and courage, and hard-won recognition of the potential for destructiveness in the closest, most loving relationships.' SARA DOWSE, Canberra Times

Bruce Sims Publishing 2000, paperback