Nine Days Study Guide

Toni Jordan was born in Brisbane, Australia, and though she always loved reading as a child, took a keen interest in science during high school and earned a Bachelor of Science at University of Queensland. Jordan held various roles in sales and management, as well as working as a research assistant, molecular biologist, and quality control chemist. Seeking a change, Jordan moved to Melbourne in 1996 and then left the sciences in 2004 and started taking writing classes. In 2008, Jordan published her debut novel Addition, a romantic comedy that went on to become an international best-seller and was a favorite of many book clubs, and her next romantic comedy Fall Girl in 2010. 2012’s Nine Days represented a shift away from romantic comedy into historical fiction, inspired by a photograph from World War II of a young woman being lifted up to kiss a soldier on a train. The novel won an Indie Award and was shortlisted for several others. Since then, Jordan has written two more novels and works as a copywriter and creative writing teacher in Melbourne, where she lives with her husband.

On September 3, 1939, Australian Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies announced to his country that as a member of the British Empire, Australia was officially at war with Germany. Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Australia, as a member of the Allied Powers, also declared war on Japan. From 1939 to World War II’s end in 1945, over 1 million Australians served in the military, fighting abroad all across Europe, North Africa, and even the Mediterranean. Between February 1942 and November 2943, Japan launched air raids against territories in Northern Australia, though these were far from Melbourne. World War II plays a significant role in Nine Days, since characters like Kip and Mac go off to fight in the war, and Jack ultimately dies fighting in North Africa, leaving Connie alone with an unplanned pregnancy.

Toni Jordan built her career as an author writing romantic comedies such as Fall Girl, about a con artist who falls in love with her mark, and Addition, a romance featuring a woman who is obsessed with counting and numbers. However, Nine Days marks her first foray into historical fiction, particularly exploring Melbourne, Australia over a span of 70 years. In doing so, Jordan joins the well-populated ranks of Australian historical fiction authors. Prominent examples of Australia’s historical fiction include The Secret River by Kate Grenville, which follows a 19th century English criminal exiled to Australia and envisions the conflict over land between indigenous aboriginal and colonizing Europeans; Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsey, a mysterious story set in 1900 about a group of girls who disappear from a boarding school in Central Victoria; and Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of 2014’s Man Booker prize, which tells the story of an Australian doctor in 1943 who is a prisoner of war and is haunted by a previous love affair with a family member’s wife. Nine Days traces multiple generations of a family through its narratives, a motif that is similarly used in books like John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Additionally, many of its characters are heavily impacted by World War II, an event that also plays a significant role in Martha Hall Kelly's Lilac Girls and Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.