num_pages: 240
description: Like a deal of Astley's fiction It's Raining in Mango is set in north Queensland an inhospitable locale in many ways but one which the Laffey family of Mango find compelling and to which they are drawn back after their half-hearted forays into urban life. The book is written in the saga form spanning four generations from 1861 to the mid-1980s though the path from past to present is neither straight nor defined. It is rather a broader and interwoven series of relationships in which the generations of the past continue to inform the present and all meld in the land and landscape. As Connie Laffey puts it: 'So closely meshed all of us the nature of our closeness bound up with this place. With family.' The novel opens in the early 1980s with Connie Lafey and her middle-aged son Reever protesting against development which is decimating to the rainforest in the Mango area. Connie anxious about Reever's safetyhe has chained himself fifty feet up a celerywood treeheads off to find help when she falls and concusses herself. The attendant delirium is the starting point for the narrative saga as the past and present converge in Connie's reverie. The narrative transports us back in time to the first generation of immigrants and the courtship and marriage of Cornelius Laffey and Jessica Olive in 1861.
language: English
title: It's Raining in Mango
publisher: Penguin Books Australia