Fiction

Reimagining Iris

An exhilarating squeezebox of a novel

by Felicity Plunkett •

December 2022, no. 449

Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor

Picador, $34.99 pb, 464 pp

Fiction

Reimagining Iris

An exhilarating squeezebox of a novel

by Felicity Plunkett •

December 2022, no. 449

The accordion, or squeezebox, takes its name from the German Akkordeon, meaning a ‘musical chorus’ or ‘chorus of sounds’. This box-shaped aerophonic instrument makes music when keys on its sides are pressed, one side mostly melody, the other chords. Squeezing the instrument and playing with both hands, the musician dexterously produces polyphonous music.

Iris Webber, the protagonist of Fiona Kelly McGregor’s eighth book and fourth novel, Iris, plays the accordion. Living in Sydney’s inner-city Surry Hills in the 1930s, Iris wrests independence and joy from this, as an alternative to being a ‘prossie’ and as respite from pervasive brutality. Though busking – ‘begging alms’ – is illegal, it’s a simpler way to make a living for Iris, enmeshed and dependent on a net of underworld unlawful activity.

Felicity Plunkett

Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Her first collection of poetry Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009) won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. She has a chapbook Seastrands (2011) in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series. Felicity was Poetry Editor for University of Queensland Press and edited Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and her reviews and essays have been widely published in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books etc. Her essay ‘Sound Bridge’, a portrait of Indigenous Australian musician Dr G. Yunupingu, was first published in Australian Book Review and anthologised in Best Australian Essays 2015 (Black Inc, ed. Geordie Williamson).