From a tiny apartment in Cold War St Petersburg Sofi and her cousins Natalya and Lena dream of the riches the West has to offer. As the wall begins to fall they discover a crack through which to slip and thus begin the usual climb to fame, fortune and the ultimate confrontation with their past. Similar to many within the genre (think Penny Vincenzi, Danielle Steel, Barbara Taylor Bradford) with its ragsto- riches plot, I was hoping for a little more from this ‘epic tale’. I was particularly interested in how the author would contrast the difficulties of a collapsing USSR with the capitalism of the West but ultimately it became a little bogged down in the clichés of the genre (for example abusive and exploitative males, and debilitating jealously between the women). As is the convention of the genre, each of three central characters handles their situation and history differently. Unfortunately I found the relentless ‘toing and fro-ing’ between them a little repetitive and as a result I found it hard to engage with any one of them in a meaningful manner. That said, Gold Dust is a reasonable read and ought to work within the women’s epic tale genre.

Rachel Wilson is an academic and occasionally works at the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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