That Stranger Next
Door by Goldie Alexander (Clan Destine Press, 2014)
Reviewed by Dianne Bates
A fictional story, That
Stranger Next Door, is nonetheless rooted in actual events that happened in
Australia in the 1950s. Ruth Cohen is a fifteen-year old girl growing up in a
Melbourne Jewish home she shares with her parents, grandfather Zeida and
younger brother Leon. Like girls her age, Ruth has dreams for her future, but
unlike her peers (and despite her mother’s ambitions for her), she doesn’t want
to become a wife and mother when she grows up; she aspires to a career as a
doctor. A scholarship student, she’s certainly clever enough. However, when she
meets Patrick O’Sullivan from a wealthy Catholic family, her ambitions fly out
of the window.
Invited to Patrick’s home where she meets his overbearing and
unlikeable father, she hears political talk at the dinner table which is at
odds with the politics of her parents who own a milk bar. Politics and events
in Australia thread through this story; the world is in the grips of the Cold
War, McCarthyism is rife in America and Australia is reeling from the shock of
the Petrov spy affair. Ruth’s father, a former communist, is concerned that
ASIO is investigating him, while Patrick’s father works for the right-wing
politician, Bob Santamaria.
The story begins with Ruth wakening one night to a mystery;
someone has stealthily moved into the flat opposite her home. When she
discovers that the new tenant is Eva who never pulls back the curtains or comes
outdoors, her active, intelligent mind creates a scenario; she comes to believe
that Eva is Evdokia Petrov, the defector. A relationship develops between the
two with Eva helping Ruth conceal her secret meetings with Patrick and acting
as a romantic sounding board. Meanwhile, Ruth suspects that strangers in black
cars near her home are spying on Eva – or are they spying on her father,
believing he is a communist spy?
In That Stranger Next
Door, Alexander has captured a genuine feel of the period in the way people
spoke then, the way they dressed and behaved. Her characters feel real, too,
from her depiction of the conflicted Ruth to Patrick’s intelligent, unfulfilled
and depressed mother. Patrick’s moodiness and his treatment of Ruth after she
loses her virginity to him are very well handled. The politics of the time and
the cultural depiction of two diverse families – the Jewish Cohens and the
Catholic O’Sullivans – ring true and is a great way of introducing teenager
readers to a critical period in Australia’s history.
The story is told from two points of view with Ruth
narrating most chapters but Eva telling her story, too – of being born in the
Ukraine, forced to become part of the army of slave labour in a German
munitions’ factory and eventually coming to Australia. Why Eva is in hiding is
not revealed until late in the book. Is she Mrs Petrov? Or is there another
reason for the mystery that surrounds her? The last chapter happens fourteen
years later when the reader learns of what has become of Ruth and answers
whether or not her ambitions were realised.
That Stranger Next
Door is an engrossing read; the historical context is woven throughout the
fiction to provide a rich background to the lives of two vastly different
families with their respective beliefs and problems. Recommended for readers 14+ years.
