The premise of Dove, Queensland writer Georgia Harper’s new novel: ‘What would you do if you had a whole day on earth free from men’? is intriguing.
Harper is also a psychologist who has worked with serious violent offenders and survivors of crime so perhaps she drew on that experience to write a story about the violence some men perpetrate against women and girls.
Dove author Georgia Harper
One question in the novel is ‘which men?’ because one girl has already been murdered and another murder is going to happen but the perpetrators are the mystery.
Set in the 1990s in the conservative, fictional town of Mablethorpe (which sounds similar to Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland), the story centres around Dove, an independent young woman who lives alone on a permaculture farm. She refuses to conform to society’s expectations of a single woman, no matter the consequences.
Dove directly challenges the behaviour of some of the men in town and she’s in danger.
A daring question
After a violent confrontation with the man next door, Dove paints a daring question on the front wall of her farm: ‘What would you do if you had a whole day on earth free of men?’
When tourists and local women answer by writing their pent-up frustrations, fears and confessions on the wall, it strikes a nerve with the local blokes. As exposed secrets and shameful legacies bubble under the surface, tensions boil up, just as the town hits the headlines over a missing teen.
Dove faces anonymous threats and her secret romance might harbour its own hidden dangers.
The story is told from three perspectives: Dove, her lover and her lover’s daughter. This device is jarring at times. While it’s interesting to hear male and female sides of the story, the teen girl’s perspective added questionable value for this reader. I was invested in Dove and her conflicted, married lover but several of the other characters (perhaps a few too many) blurred through the story.
The narrative drive sags at times while building to a sudden, dramatic climax which may have worked better without the long and sometimes pedestrian leadup.
The writing is accessible (Harper’s not going for a literary voice) and much of the plot unfolds through ample dialogue between the many characters of the small town. Most of the townspeople are affected by the simmering tension between men and women: whether it’s an unhappy marriage, bad blood between neighbours or a teen girl forbidden to ride her pushbike around town because of fears for her safety.
Tensions between men and women
The heavy themes are relieved with a few light moments: Dove has a goat called Guinevere who fights being milked with comic results and her gun-toting, older friend Hazel is a delight.
Dove is a feminist book graphically depicting what happens when a woman calls out men’s violence and oppression whether it’s a nasty male doctor, a wife-bashing neighbour or the local men judging women’s sex lives in a way they don’t judge other men. The feminist theme is original and brave. It works shockingly well because the depictions of 1990s Australia where every woman and girl fears for her safety (at least some of the time) ring true.
Is women’s safety any better in the present day? Our Watch reports violence against Australian women has slightly decreased in the past ten years. However, Our Watch’s latest statistics are that two in five women experienced violence and men are commonly the perpetrators.
Sadly, this continuing prevalence of gendered violence makes Dove highly relevant in 2026. The fact that it’s fiction gives Harper creative licence to deliver some satisfying justice and inspiration alongside what are fictional depictions of some really hard truths.
Dove is Harper’s second book. Her debut: What I Would Do to You, won Best Debut Book at the 2025 Davitt Awards and was shortlisted for Best Crime Fiction Debut at the 2025 Danger Awards.
Dove is published by Penguin Books, RRP is $34.99.
