Maralinga

This book was a revelation: multiple nuclear bomb tests resulting in local Aboriginal people being slaughtered, men so close their hands were xrayed, young men exposed to radiation experimentally -- and all this ignored by England (continuing to use Australia as a colony) and Australia itself until many years after. I was a child in Adelaide, a city a mere 600 k away, where radiation was way over acceptable limits. Judy Nunn has meticulously researched these horrendous events in our history and reveals the complacency of decision makers (political and military), the trivialising of human pain and extinction of life in the name of research (as reflected in the attitudes by some towards Aboriginal people) as well as those who betray. She has interwoven her research with the creation of very real characters who have the courage to embrace life -- and convincingly places them in the political and social Australia of the fifties. This is an engrossing and highly recommended book.

The start of the book isn't the way you expect but once you keep listening everything ties in. Two twists in the book that aren't expected.

What a wonderful story. It covered both fact and fiction. The characters were very believable. Not only a great read but the best history lesson I have ever had.

I have read several books by Judy Nunn, this is up to her good standard which I enjoy. It was almost entirely destroyed by the the narrator Deidre Rubenstein reading it as if it were a bodice ripper romance.

The history of Maralinga was so far from what it was portrayed by the government of the day.The least interesting/annoying part was the way the Lord from MI6 was portrayed as shouting all the time.

It should have been read as a mystery novel not a romance story.

I may look up more about it on the internet.

Just because it was a story from history doesn't mean it's an historical novel.