“Always look for the laughs. And if there are none about, either make some of your own, or go and find them.”

“Don’t just be yourself, be someone kinder, braver and more generous than yourself.”

This is a feminist contemporary fiction set in Tasmania by Australian author Meg Bignell which I read for bookclub. Freycinet Barnes has a busy suburban life juggling kids, work and her husband’s pressing schedule. One day she is inadvertently thrown into a choir where women meet, chat and sing out their anger together. She meets an assorted bunch of colourful characters including the choir director and activist Bizzy, the beautiful vivacious Rosanna struggling with terminal illness, murderer Eleanor, slowly dementing Irene and outrageous potty-mouth Quin. Together the women deal with their challenges, including Frey herself as an unexpected discovery puts her ordered life into turmoil. The women also work together to stage a protest drawing attention to women’s issues and oppression.

This was a feel good fiction with quirky strong female characters. The thing I enjoyed most was Rosanna’s list of life tips to pass onto her children interspersed throughout the book. Somehow I wasn’t totally sold though. Some of the characters felt like cardboard cutouts and it felt like a tick box exercise of how many issues you can squeeze into one book such as eating disorders, death and dying, infidelity, homelessness, the environment and feminism. Ultimately, although it was fun, it boiled down to privileged white women trying to feel important by hashtagging the crap out of everything, with their achievements and success measured by the number of Facebook likes. ( )

Angry white feminist with uplifting moments ( )

“I’m all for stirring things up but the West Moonah Womens Choir manages perfectly well in its steady, peaceful way. The Angry Womens Choir would burn down the world.”

I knew by page three I was going to adore Meg Bignell’s new release, The Angry Womens Choir, as much as I did The Sparkle Pages and Welcome To Nowhere River.

A story of friendship, community and empowerment, it begins when busy wife and mother Freycinet Barnes distractedly steps in front of a moving car. The driver, Kyrie and her passenger Rosanna, are members of the West Moonah Womens Choir, and Freycinet (who dislikes being called Frey) finds herself welcomed into their supportive fold.

The award-winning West Moonah Womens Choir is made up of nine women of different ages and stages of life. They are well known for their traditional repertoire performed at various events in Tasmania, but in private the women transform into The Angry Womens Choir, belting out their large, and small, frustrations and ‘furies’ in song.

“So we have a rebel princess, the actual Liniment Girl, a hero lawyer, a badly behaved genius, a dementing woman, a rising star, a dying woman and a murderess.”

The choir is more than just a group of singers, they are a family who choose to love, support, and celebrate one another, even if they occasionally squabble like siblings. Bignell has created a delightful cast of unique women, some with quite extraordinary histories, all of whom I came to care for, from the formidable choir director Bizzy, to the brave and tragic Rosanna. Despite appearances, and her own doubts, Freycinet, it transpires, fits right in. I enjoyed getting to know her and cheered her on as she struggled to reclaim herself.

Freycinet joins the choir just as they have announced they are going to host their own rally in a few months to protest oppression in all its forms. Naturally there is a strong feminist angle to this theme, but it’s intended as an inclusionary term to encourage empathy and everyday activism. Bignell captures the passion, energy and courage of these women and their campaign to make a difference that will not only better the community, but themselves as well.

Other subplots are weaved neatly into the story including the threat to the choir’s practice space, a shabby historical building which a local councillor is determined to demolish and Freycinet’s daughter’s struggle with an eating disorder. Most of the choir members also have an arc of sorts from an unexpected pregnancy, to a reunion with a lost love.

Though there is plenty of humour, and even moments of sheer absurdity, to be found in The Angry Womens Choir, which are sure to make you laugh out loud, there is real emotional depth to this novel as Bignell explores loss, grief, regret, forgiveness, and rage.

The Angry Womens Choir is witty, impassioned, poignant. A joy to read, I encourage you to #JointheChorus ( )