The Strays

The Strays is a novel by the Australian author Emily Bitto, published in 2014 and her first. It is told in old age by Lily, an art history lecturer, who looks back at her childhood in 1930s Melbourne.

Lily's entry into the household comes through a friendship with Eva Trentham, one of the daughters of the painter Evan Trentham. Trentham and his wife invite other like-minded artists to live and work at their family home, trying to escape the stifling conservatism of the Australia they belonged to.

Lily becomes infatuated with the wild and makeshift family she finds there and wants to be part of it properly. As the years pass she observes the way the lives of the artists come to reflect the same themes as their art, including the bargains they have made.

The household in the novel is a fictionalised version of the group of artists who lived and worked together outside Melbourne in the 1930s, and the book is about a child who is welcomed into an experiment and then has to live with knowing how it turned out.