The French Revolution is not usually seen as having much female content - I can think of Marie Antoinette, Madame Defarge, Madame de Staell’. Charlotte Corday - perhaps Lucie Manette. But the big names were not girls’ names. Olympe de Gouges was, it seems, a historical character – by which I mean a real woman, and here she comes into the foreground wielding a furious power. I found the longest section of the book, the part that follows Olympe’s story, by far the most lively and engaging. Maurilia Meehan has recreated Olympe de Gouges with passion, affection and delight, bringing her to the point where she knows she is not alone: ‘I was one in a chain, a great historical chain of women. Just as there had been free women before me, there were thousands after me and I mustn’t ever think I was alone.’

Rose water, orange water, lavender water, Hun­gary water perfume the pages (not literally, sorry) of Fury. The Paris of the Revolution is dirty and stinky, and Olympe often thinks of fountains and water and sweet smells: ‘In the women’s courtyard is a treasure – a fountain that provides as much water as we want.’ Water is of course symbolic of woman and is one of the motifs used here to bring the role and power of the woman forward. Beautiful women bathe, what’s more, in milk. ‘At night I dream of a bath, with milk, and of universal peace.’ Men smell of rotten fish.

The great love of Olympe’s last days is the American ambassador to Paris, Gouverneur Morris. He is the New World embroiled in the Old World, longing for Olympe, bringing her violets, washing her in lavender, listening to her, loving her, losing her. But she can see that his new world is not really all that new - even the chicken recipes he thinks are American are really French. Coles New World in Northcote is another thing again. Layers of meaning are lightly tossed one on another, times and places and people are shifted about with wit and skill.

It is a great pleasure to read an Australian novel that takes the risks this one takes. Transmigration of souls is not often done, and flipping in and out of history is tricky stuff. Maurilia Meehan writes with absolute conviction and persuades, largely with her playfulness, I think. Many a play within a play here. And there is the clear belief in the power of words themselves, as we see that people can kill with the pen as well as with the guillotine. Heads roll, of course, in a novel set during the French Revolution, and such heads: ‘Marie Antoinette’s hairdresser would wind fourteen ells of lace into one coiffure, pile it up so that her chin lay exactly midway between the tip of her toes and the top of her hair, then festoon it with false hair, ribbons, flowers, birds and jewels.’

The intention of this novel is highly serious: to bring to light the part played by women in the French Revolution; the method is teasing and highly enjoyable. Coles New World in Northcote (if there is one, and I daresay there is) takes on a whole new meaning.