Australia in 2026 is not an easy place to be a woman.
Authoritarianism has crept into the country. Women have lost their rights and voices. But Bodie and her militant granddaughter, Insley, are gambling everything to return them. They have set up a radical feminist group, Queentide, to steal the upcoming election and make Aboriginal politician, Kathleen, the next Prime Minister of an all-women Government. The ex-wife of a senior Minister, Lilith, vows to help them by sharing explosive secrets that will guarantee Queentide's success.
But two things might stop them. A state-backed, violent men's rights group and a bitter power struggle that threatens to tear Queentide apart.
Can the women harness the storm and smash the patriarchy? Or will Queentide wreck itself?
Australia in 2026 is not an easy place to be a woman.
Authoritarianism has crept into the country. Women have lost their rights and voices. But Bodie and her militant granddaughter, Insley, are gambling everything to return them. They have set up a radical feminist group, Queentide, to steal the upcoming election and make Aboriginal politician, Kathleen, the next Prime Minister of an all-women Government. The ex-wife of a senior Minister, Lilith, vows to help them by sharing explosive secrets that will guarantee Queentide's success.
But two things might stop them. A state-backed, violent men's rights group and a bitter power struggle that threatens to tear Queentide apart.
Can the women harness the storm and smash the patriarchy? Or will Queentide wreck itself?
Bodie Hughes had seen it all. Not because she’d reached a significant age. Time on earth didn’t equate to understanding it. There were plenty of folks with walking frames but not a single clue. No. She had seen it all because she had looked behind the curtain. The one most people pretend isn’t there.
Sometime around 1965, Bodie decided there was more to life than pot roasts and white weddings and hitched a ride to San Francisco, which seemed back then to be the opposite of Idaho. She was escaping. Looking for freedom from her mother’s expectations and a life so small it would’ve crushed her in a matter of years. She stopped being Doris from Idaho and became Bodie from San Francisco, who smoked hash, hung out with musicians and could drink any man under the table. But all that freedom left a tooth-stripping saccharine taste in her mouth, warning her it was entirely artificial.
The miniskirts and drugs were a distraction from the pretty beaded curtain that hid the truth from hip women like Bodie. The terrifying truth. They were not liberated. Just like the Dorises from Idaho, they were still chained to the kitchen sink. Just too high on the hype to see the shackles.
When a colleague had to leave the office after getting married, Bodie took a peek behind that curtain. Then a friend died from a backyard abortion, and the curtain opened just a little more. Another got committed by a cheating husband because it was cheaper than divorcing her. It was then that Bodie tugged at the curtain until the damn thing fell. Until she was staring the dragon in the eye.
For sixty years since, she’d fought it with protests and doctorates and women’s collectives. She’d even chased it halfway across the world. But she had failed to defeat it on this new battlefield. In fact, since the 2020 pandemic, its fiery breath seemed to have got hotter. It had come up with unpredictable ways to hurt women. To keep them scared and in their place.
But Bodie had a new tactic, one the dragon wouldn’t see coming. And that’s where Janet De Marco came in. Janet wasn’t as old as Bodie, but she knew the dragon just as well. As a female lawyer, even just to become a female lawyer, she’d had plenty of battles with it. Janet had even managed to get some spears through its thickened hide. The occasional scorching she’d got in return had made her more determined to keep on fighting.
But she knew, just like Bodie, that they were losing. Women were losing here in Australia. All over the world. Janet De Marco did not like to lose. She’d want this to work as much as Bodie. God knows she’d been trying. Swinging at the Australian Government when it kept its ‘temporary’ powers. Hammering the judges when droves of abusive men walked free because of the ‘unique mental pressure’ of the bushfires and pandemic lockdowns. Janet didn’t like to lose. And recently, she’d been losing a lot. She was tired. They were all so damn tired. But Bodie was sure her idea would be like a hit of caffeine and sugar. Straight into the veins.
Bodie waited for Janet to finish reading, looking over the lawyer’s perfect bouffant with the glossy silver streaks. She ran a hand through her own messy spikes and wondered how two women who looked so different could think the same.
‘Jesus, Bodie.’ Janet De Marco moved her glasses to the end of her nose, removing the barrier between her eyes and Bodie’s. ‘Legally, yes, nothing can prevent you from doing this. Of course, we both know you didn’t need a lawyer to tell you that. But, practically, do you think this is possible?’
‘Yes.’ Bodie reminded herself to sound confident. Less tired. ‘I do.’
Janet raised her eyebrows. ‘You really think you can get the numbers?’
‘If I can expand the support base, get the other groups on board. If I can make them see we all win if Queentide wins, I mean, if the Women’s Party wins’ – Bodie scrunched her eyes and fists; it was going to be hard, not using the name of the movement she’d spent years establishing, but this was not about her – ‘then yes. I’ – Bodie corrected herself again. This was not about her, she reminded herself – ‘we. We can do this.’
Janet smiled. She knew Bodie struggled to find the right words to ask for help. It was a foreign language she hadn’t bothered to learn. She was feeding her the lines. ‘So, what do you want from me?’
Bodie breathed in, ‘Legal advice. Free. There are a lot of people who will want us to fail.’
Janet nodded. A little too enthusiastically.
‘And they will have more resources than you. I get it.’ She waved her hand, the sunlight catching on the gold and gems on her fingers. ‘This firm is at your disposal. But you will need more than a room full of lawyers. You are going to need people that understand election processes. Not just the policy stuff. The backroom stuff. The backstabbing stuff. You know? You will need PR and marketing. A shitload of it.’ Janet paused, narrowing her eyes. ‘And I can’t imagine the media are going to lend you a megaphone. You are going to need someone loud enough without one. You’ll need to create your own media. I’ll put some feelers out. Leave the hiring to me.’
Bodie finally let go of the breath she’d been holding. ‘Thank you, Janet.’
The offer of help felt like drinking a shot of bourbon: endorphins filled her veins. The unfamiliar sensation, the relief, of someone taking some of her load had altered her balance. It made her feel not quite complete. Not in control. Drunk. Scared. Trying to regain her composure, Bodie focused on Janet’s face. The worry she found there instantly restoring the weight on her shoulder.
‘You know what you are getting into here, Bodie? What we are getting into, right? You know the discipline that is going to be needed to pull this off?’ It was a loaded question – a direct hit to Bodie’s heart.
‘If you are worried about Insley, don’t be.’ Bodie intended her voice to be a full stop on the conversation of her granddaughter. But Janet wasn’t one to be punctuated by someone else. Even Bodie Hughes. She aimed again.
‘I’m always worried about Insley. Where is she now?’
‘Doing what Insley does, saving the world one woman at a time.’ Bodie’s smile failed to land, crashing into a frown. ‘Single-handed.’
‘She can’t be making trouble once you start this Bodie. If you’ve any chance of succeeding, Queentide needs to come across as utterly respectable. Not a word anyone would use to describe Insley, not even you. You might be hiding Queentide on the ballot paper, calling it the Women’s Party, using some semi-defunct political party as a Trojan horse, but everyone will know you are the one on the inside, steering it through the gates of Canberra. We can’t have your family turn up in court for killing someone.’
That blow struck hard. Reaching too many nerves. Bruising a memory too close to the surface. Insley, still so small she needed a cushion to see the judge, calmly, too calmly, explaining what she had seen her father do. Bodie, still jetlagged, biting her lip so she didn’t cry. Trying to be brave for her granddaughter, as she heard how Celeste, her daughter, had died. She decided that day to move to Sydney to take care of Insley. As well as you can take care of a wildflower.
‘We’ll have a meeting in a few days. I may need you to help convince the others of the change of direction. In the meantime, let me buy you lunch. It’s the least I can do.’ Bodie talked before Janet realised the damage that had been done and scrambled to apologise. Or worse. Ask Bodie how long it had been now. Twenty years, almost? Bodie didn’t have an answer. When you lost a daughter, you didn’t count it in years or even days. You counted it in unmade memories. For Bodie, that was incalculable.
Oblivious or relieved, Janet shook her head. ‘Sorry, I’ve got a client now. A paying one. Hopefully.’ The obese emerald prevented her from fully crossing her fingers, and Bodie stopped feeling bad about the pro bono work. ‘But I’ll be at the meeting. Helen is going to hate this.’ Bodie let out a heavy sigh. Helen’s research had inspired Bodie to start Queentide, but her rigid opposition to politicising the movement was limiting it. Helen believed in playing fair, even in an unfair world. Bodie had too, but now time was running out.
You are going to need my help, or at least my moral support.’ Janet looked down at her rose-gold watch. A Rolex. ‘Jesus, is that the time? My client is probably already in reception. She sounded positively terrified about coming in. Poor girl. I’ll walk you out.’
Janet was already on her feet. Bodie took the hint and started stuffing the files and laptop back into her cavernous patchwork knapsack.
‘Is she in some kind of trouble, this new client?’ Bodie couldn’t stop herself from asking, even though she knew she couldn’t, shouldn’t, help. Not now.
‘All the people I meet are in some kind of trouble.’ Her eyebrows raised, and her glazed lips curled into a cynical smile. ‘She’s left her husband. I don’t know much more than that.’ Janet scanned the office for anything out of place and found an offending crooked file. ‘Oh, except that he, the ex-husband, is Ben Henderson. You know that young politician? Minister for Bullshit.’
Bodie knew him well enough to grimace when she heard the name. The author of the Discrimination Bill, a policy that made it legal for women to be sacked for ‘morally offending’ Christian bosses, or any bosses, in fact.
Bodie remembered there was always a woman with him in press conferences. The wife. A polished prop for the cameras, proof the Bill wasn’t all that bad – how could it be if a woman was standing right next to him? The accessory didn’t talk. Or smile. Bodie did think she’d seen her nearly cry once. She didn’t even know her name. How could she not know her name? How had Bodie Hughes let a woman become scenery?
She had to rectify this. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Er … Lilith?’ Janet picked up a legal pad. ‘Lilith Green. She’s already gone back to her maiden name. How d’you like that?’
Bodie liked it a great deal. She’d left a name behind in Idaho. It was too heavy with anger to bring with her. She wondered what was weighing down Lilith’s old name.
The phone on Janet’s desk buzzed, slightly startling them both.
‘And she’s here.’ Janet looked around, exasperated to see things out of place, even though, to Bodie, it seemed just fine. Except Bodie’s mug, off the coaster, on Janet’s glass desk. Bodie picked it up, then saw the circle it had left behind, so put it down again. But Janet had already witnessed the crime and tutted at Bodie. ‘Come on, old woman,’ Janet said as she shooed Bodie out of the office. ‘Let me make some money so I can work for you for free.’
Bodie and Janet were still laughing as they emerged into the clinically clean reception. Bodie saw an out-of-place bundle of creases perched on the white leather sofa. The face and body as crumpled as the clothes, as though this woman had collapsed in on herself and didn’t have the strength, or inclination, to straighten herself back out. Their boisterous entrance had startled her. She jumped, her teacup sloshing its contents on the saucer.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear. We are so loud. Can I help you?’ On instinct, Bodie made her way towards the bundle, but Janet cut her off.
Gliding across the room, her two arms open, purposefully blocking Bodie. The bundle lifted her chin, quickly glancing at the door as if she were working out how long it would take to reach it. Then she locked two hesitant eyes on Bodie, giving her an intense but wary once-over. Bodie smiled in as friendly a manner as she could muster, then turned to busy herself with Ed, the amiable receptionist. Bodie had lived around nature long enough to know you don’t corner a wounded animal. They might die of shock. Or attack you. She couldn’t tell which way it would go with this one yet. She asked Ed about his weekend, giving one ear to his most recent dating antics and the other to Lilith Green.
‘Lilith. Lovely to put a face to a voice.’ Janet listened to the apologies, for spilt tea on the sofa, for her clumsiness. For bothering Janet. ‘Oh please, don’t worry about that. Ed will take that for you.’ She gathered up Lilith Green and, with an arm around the younger woman’s shoulder, swept her clean past Bodie. ‘Come on through.’
Bodie lingered and watched Janet settle her into a conference room, a place without Bodie’s coffee stains on the desk. Janet gave a quick wave, possibly a dismissing waft, and closed the heavy glass door behind them.
Bodie paused but then forced herself to leave. If she was going to pull this off – if they were going to pull this off – she was going to have to let others swing the sword. She just wasn’t strong enough to do it on her own anymore. Besides, she found out long ago, the hard way, that she couldn’t save them all. It was time to stop. There was a new plan.
Wearily leaving the office, Bodie considered the train. She realised she had no energy for dragon fighting that afternoon. The young women would have to deflect the words and hands themselves. Bodie couldn’t always be there. She wouldn’t always be there.
With a heart as heavy as her feet, Bodie took a taxi to the community. It was the place she shared with the women she had saved, back when she thought that would be enough. Enough reparations. Enough to halt the accumulation of unmade memories of her daughter.
But living with these women, these pseudo-daughters, was like swimming in an ocean of missed moments – an ocean whose currents got stronger every day. Exhausted in the backseat, she prayed that what she had planned would be enough to slow its movements.
To finally lay her daughter’s memory, and her own mind and body, to rest.
The premise of Queentide by Donna Fisher is strong: a feminist movement recruits strong women to pursue the election of Australia’s first female, indigenous, LGBTQIA+ Prime Minister. There’s nothing I like more than feminist themes and strong female characters bringing down the patriarchy but unfortunately, Queentide didn’t quite meet my expectation. Â
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Since this is a new and exciting twist on an old idea, I hoped to meet new and exciting protagonists to go with it. Instead, they felt stereotypical. We meet Bodie in 1965 when she threw caution to the wind and gave the proverbial finger to societal norms like getting married and being a small-town housewife. We know straight away that Bodie is of a certain moral compass, her passion is helping people. Next, we meet Janet, a high-profile lawyer accustomed to winning. We hear about Insley, Bodie’s granddaughter, a wild child. Lilith is the wife of Ben, a young politician making waves for passing bills that contribute to the rise of men and the decline of women in the workplace. It would have been great if the author left subtle hints as the story progresses instead of the reader being immediately aware of who every character is and what role they play within seconds of meeting them, which essentially means the plot is laid out within the first 50 or so pages. I did enjoy the subsequent characters as I did feel they gave a fresh take to the plot.Â
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I also would have liked to see more of an insight into the breakdown of men’s mental health rather than the one sentence that alluded to COVID-19 and bushfires, I felt there could have been many more contributing factors and details that would have fleshed out the story and given it more depth.  Â
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Despite feeling this way, it is clear that the author’s intentions to bring women to the forefront and bring awareness to current issues that women face which I thought was fantastic. It would have been great to see certain plot points played out in a certain way, such as Lilith finding the Queentide Bible left somewhere, so we could have been introduced to her before Bodie or Janet. Without giving too much away, it would seem that Lilith still would have been inclined to ring the number she found after reading it due to her circumstances.Â
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Overall, Queentide features a really strong idea that lacks execution. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. Also, the cover art is beautiful! Â