This is an engaging and moving picture of a girl and her family, who are placed under stress when their mother, who is the heart of the family, is suddenly taken ill and is unable to care for her husband and four children.
Nadine Garner is wonderful as the schoolgirl 'Mull' Mullens (though her mother calls her Phoebe). She is by turns sulky, enthusiastic, bored and loving. She not only has to deal with her sick mother, but her born-again Christian, ex-alcoholic father (Bill Hunter), her older, gay brother who takes drugs rather than any responsibility, and her two sweet younger siblings Jo and Allen. It's a lot for a young girl in a cramped flat without much money, but she does the best she can, with occasional help from the others.
Taken from the book Mullaway, by Bron Nicholls, this is a good story, very much in the realist tradition, and an evocative portrait of St Kilda in the 80s, before the area became gentrified.
Nadine Garner is wonderful as the schoolgirl 'Mull' Mullens (though her mother calls her Phoebe). She is by turns sulky, enthusiastic, bored and loving. She not only has to deal with her sick mother, but her born-again Christian, ex-alcoholic father (Bill Hunter), her older, gay brother who takes drugs rather than any responsibility, and her two sweet younger siblings Jo and Allen. It's a lot for a young girl in a cramped flat without much money, but she does the best she can, with occasional help from the others.
Taken from the book Mullaway, by Bron Nicholls, this is a good story, very much in the realist tradition, and an evocative portrait of St Kilda in the 80s, before the area became gentrified.
