The Gilded Cage

This is the A format edition of the first novel in Marshall Browne's Melbourne historical trilogy, the third of which, The Trumpeting Angel, was published last January.Set at the height of the land boom in Melbourne in 1888, this is the story of William Boyd, a wealthy but feckless young man distracted from his business by a love affair with a young, unstable artist. An old enemy of William's father involves him in an enormous but unsound loan that threatens to wipe out the savings of all the bank's depositors. As his public and private worlds implode, William finds himself tested as never before.A splendid gallery of characters twirl like dancers in a gilded cage in this dazzling evocation of pre-Federation Melbourne.