Tripple Ripple
The Age
Saturday February 26, 2011
Tripple RippleBrigid LowryAllen & Unwin, $17.99BRIGID Lowry has ambitiously created an unusual structure for her latest book, a fairytale for clever young girls. Triple Ripple is essentially three different stories that are alternated throughout the book. One is the actual fairytale, another is about the young reader, Nova, who is reading the fairytale, and the third story is about "the Writer" who is struggling to write the fairytale.In fact Triple Ripple could easily be read as a craft-of-writing book with ongoing illustrations, in the form of the fairytale, of what the Writer has to say or is struggling to say. As she worries and thrashes about and tries out different plot points we find ourselves reading different versions of a fairytale chapter. The Writer also agonises quite a bit about deadlines and quotes that marvellous line from Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."As for the actual fairytale, there are no fairies because the Writer doesn't believe in them. But there is a palace and a curse and strange forces at work. Eventually Glory the Maid and Mirabella the Princess find respective happiness ever after. Then there is the reader, Nova, who liked fairytales when she was little because "they're full of love and fear, and extraordinary things could happen". And, of course, wonderful things do happen to Nova as her life parallels that of Glory and Mirabella.Told with a delicate touch of parody, Triple Ripple comfortably achieves the goal of its ambitious three-part structure.
© 2011 The Age