My Hundred Glorious Phrases – review My Hundred Lovers

I love Susan Johnson. Sorry, I haven’t started batting for the other team. Let me qualify. I love Susan Johnson’s writing.

It took three library borrows to find the time to read this book and now that I have it’s on my list of books to own. I consumed My Hundred Lovers with a passion I usually reserve for expensive wine. Aside from the delicious poetry of her writing, Johnson had a way of delivering this story that made it read like a degustation menu. Each chapter was served like a delectable morsel with its own particular flavour within a broader and very satisfying narrative.

The premise of the story is a woman turning 50 reflecting back over her experiences of love, or what she thought was love, throughout her life. While the work is rich with eroticism, it’s no romance. This is an exploration of what it feels like when love, and it’s elusive sisters, beauty and sensuality, come to visit.

Johnson’s mastery of erotic language transforms ordinary things – grass, sunshine, a bridge – into living entities, imbuing them with a soul and memory of their own. Each chapter describes an experience of love, often erotic love, of men, women, buildings, history, family, words, bodies, cities, wine, cigarettes and her son. The story of a woman’s ordinary life unfolds in the context of extraordinary history – from the 1960’s to present day – placing her ancestral history within the bigger political and social movements of each decade.

Interwoven in the narrative a kernels of life truths that rang so true I copied many of them down:
‘I was born preferring death to surrender.’
‘…love was supposed to mean desiring the happiness of the lover as much as one desired it for oneself…let the lover be himself or herself, unopposed!’
‘Love lives in the body and when love dies the body is the first to know.’

There was more to my love of this book than just the writing. I related to the story being told through the experiences of the protagonist on a very personal level. It was one of those reading experiences littered with ‘ah-huh’ moments. I felt Johnson was able to beautifully articulate the impulsive confusion of desire that ignites most love affairs – especially the bad ones. The sense many of us get at a certain age that we a ‘destined to live out life within the poor confines of unwitting compulsions.’ And the point (which I am quickly approaching) when we realise we must live with the consequences of these compulsive decisions, the poor choices of lovers in whatever form they came, and the inevitable truth that the heat of youth is cooling in our veins.

The ending seemed particularly poignant to me. She (the protagonist) identifies that her true love has always been romantic love, and that it will ever be unrequited because it ‘naturally and properly never gave me what it promised’. Given much of the content of my own work focuses on unrequited love, this admission resonated strongly with me. Our obsession with romantic love, our unending belief in soulmates and love at first sight, renders us children in the face of real love. While we believe in such fantasies we keep ourselves forever in desire (a not unpleasant place to be for some) and never able to recognise the very ordinary nature of love when it comes our way.

My Hundred Lovers has to be my favourite book for this year. In the words of Molly Meldrum, do yourself a favour.

Adopt-a-madness

We’re going to adopt a dog. A Greyhound to be exact. I can’t tell you why. It’s not like we need another animal to look after. Bear, our Border Collie-Samoyd cross, has only been part of our family for 3 months and in that time he has re-landscaped the back yard, escaped five times, chewed up innumerable toys and destroyed our TV watching pleasure by destroying the remote.

We’ve spent hundreds of dollars dog proofing the back yard and buying dog toys we hope will distract him from our personal belongings – all to no avail. He’s so emotionally needy he can’t last five minutes without asking for a pat. He’s got so much fur he doesn’t mind one bit shedding it in a fine layer all over the floor, the furniture, us. And I won’t even get started on how pissed off the cat is with us for bringing him into her life.

So what better remedy to our canine ills than bringing another lost mouth into the household?

You’re right. We’re mad. We’ve been deliberating for a while whether a companion would solve Bear’s emotional issues, deciding over and again that two dogs would be too much work. Until Wednesday. I came home to a message from the good folk at the Greyhound Adoption Program.
‘we have a lovely 2&1/2 year old girl – great with kids and cats – for adoption. If you’re interested you can see her on the website, her name is Belle.’

Belle. If her name had been Rosie or Hercules or Bumfluff I would have deleted the message without a second thought. But Belle – the same as my recently acquired pen-name -It seemed like a sign. Not that I’m particularly superstitious, but I am a big fan of synchronicity. And this little coincidence followed a discussion on the glories of Greyhounds with a colleague the very same morning. it seemed like it was ‘meant to be’.

So here we are, 9.30am Saturday morning, hurtling to Seymour with Bear whining in the back and Miss 8 nagging ‘pleeeeeze can we get her’ – to meet Belle the greyhound – the new member of our mad family. With a little bit of luck she’ll be sane – but I doubt it.

The rush

Escalator (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

Speed. The world we live in is built on it.

It’s a fact that’s been made more obvious to me since I’ve been hobbling heavy-footed around Melbourne city streets during peak hour, a crutch in one hand and my determination not to be pushed out of the way firmly in the other.

Returning to work after 7 weeks away from the madding crowd was something of a shock. I hadn’t noticed how quickly people in our city move. 90% of the population is in a frightening hurry while the remaining 10% is getting in its way. Knee surgery has forced me from the 90% into the 10%, and I’m getting a taste of life in the slow lane.

Getting onto a peak hour escalator has become an extreme sport for me. I have to deftly calculate the exact moment I can step into the fast moving queue without causing people to back up behind me, then I need to get exactly the right foot ready at exactly the right moment to step onto the escalator without going A over T (look it up J).

Most people politely move around me. With some I can sense their frustration bearing down on my back as they come up behind me. I can also sense the flood of relief as they shuttle past into the mainstream current of pedestrians.

This is what it’s like to be old. This is what it’s like to have a body that doesn’t work at the same speed as the 90%. The world waits for no one. If you can’t keep up you’re gonna be well and truly left behind. It’s bewildering. And terrifying.

I can’t help but wonder if this frantic rush isn’t driven by our technologically-dominated lives. The rate at which we receive and consume information has increased exponentially in the past decade, and I think it’s making us all a bit manic. It’s evident in our addiction to e-devices. We can’t imagine life without God Google or time-wasting Facebook. What did we do before these things dominated our lives?

I’ll remind you. We read newspapers from cover to cover. We hand wrote letters and used the postal system. We looked forward to the supermarket and toy catalogues arriving in our letterbox. We had patience and we waited for answers that weren’t immediately available. We looked things up in libraries. We remembered things.

Managing the rate at which life happens now is a constant challenge. I can barely comprehend the deluge of unsolicited demands that land in my 3 email inboxes, my letterbox, in-tray, phone, Facebook updates, and Twitter account.  I find myself besieged by community groups to corporations, causes to politicians, beggars to bandwagons, all screaming ‘Pay attention to ME! Listen to what I have to say’.

Finding the information I actually want, rather than the information everybody else wants to give me, is like looking for a pearl in a sea of jaggedy oysters. It means I scan, take information in on an ‘inch deep, mile wide’ basis and I never really know much about anything that’s going on, while knowing a little bit about everything that’s going on (which is vastly confusing).

Having to physically slow down has made me realise that mentally I’m travelling at 200km/h – and it’s time to put on the brakes. My brain and body will be better off if I take a breath, relax and pay closer attention to the things that matter – like sending a friend a hand written card and getting on the escalator without falling over.

Gay game of hide ‘n’ seek

The Australian gay marriage debate has all but disappeared from mainstream media in the last week or so, in spite of it taking up exorbitant amounts of air time in previous months. I listened to the constant tooing and froing of the debate with increasing consternation. Living in a democratic society is a privilege too many of us take for granted. In Australia each of us are invested with the freedom to express our views and have a say in the governance of our nation. It is an honour and yet we often struggle to do this responsibly and manage to make a complete mess of very simple issues.

I cannot comprehend why we needed to waste so much time nationally arguing about something that has no impact on any of the big ticket issues affecting us all. Gay marriage does not threaten Australia’s security, or economy, or trade, or education outcomes, or health outcomes, or employment or any other relevant issue you care to name. Why are we as a nation even bothering to argue about it? It’s as silly as arguing about whether interracial marriage should be allowed, or whether older people should marry younger people. The proposition that legalising gay marriage requires broad community discussion is comprehensively ridiculous.

And yet, here we are, still without any legal recognition of the thousands of well established, long standing gay relationships in our community. It shouldn’t surprise me. It’s a national game of hide and seek with reality that has been part of our culture for a long time. In spite of evidence to the contrary we like to pretend that things we are not culturally comfortable with simply don’t exist. We go out of our way to invalidate them by dismissing them from view. Just look at our track record on Aboriginal affairs, immigration and gender equality.

I tried (really, I did) to understand the arguments the ‘against gay marriage’ lobby were putting into the public sphere, but the more I read/heard the less fundamental logic or reason I saw. What I did see was a bunch of largely heterosexual men (and some heterosexual women) asserting their personal views and sense of entitlement in telling others in the community how they should live, based on their own blatant, and usually unacknowledged, prejudice.

When the votes for the gay marriage bills were announced I was astonished. Who are these people, in our parliaments and in our community, who think they have the right to dictate, on behalf of all of us, which kind of relationships are recognised as valid and which are not? What saddened me most was that these people were in the majority. Is this the country I live in? Really?

I know how much lobbying went on prior to those parliamentary votes. The homosexual community and their many supporters worked hard to get the support of their various representatives in government. They were let down by the democratic process because the people who have the most say are not gay and cannot understand someone who is. And the saddest thing is, the rest of us were let down too. Our parliamentary process has returned us to a state of wilful blindness, where the only truly valid, culturally accepted relationship is the one that occurs between a man and a woman.

Fluffy love: review URL Love

Let’s get one thing straight from the outset. I’m not a huge fan of traditional romance. The almost-holding-hands and occasional kiss just doesn’t quite do it for me. If there’s no bodice ripping by the third page I’m yawning – or yelling at the characters to just get their knickers off.

Which is why I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this little gem, URL Love. Yes, I have a story in it, and yes I have a vested interest to like it, but even without those things I still very much enjoyed chewing over these stories. They are a perfect accompaniment to a glass of wine and a late night read.

The premise of the collection is online romance. How do we seduce each other in the 21st century, now we have access to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and email? After reading these stories two subtle themes struck me. One: how we try to create our ideal persona online only to have to face the terror of meeting love interest in the flesh with all our warts on display. Who we are and who we think we are, are clearly two very different things. And two: how social media has made it easier to reconnect with a love interest of yesteryear. I think anyone over 35 can relate to that one.

Each story is unique in character and setting and I think it’s that diversity that makes the stories work together as a group. Generally it’s all about happy endings, with some LOL humour and a few hot scenes for perverts like myself. In fact, my story stands out against the others only because it’s much darker, it has a full sex scene (no holds barred people) and it’s the only one that ends sadly. (I’ll leave you to come up with your own theories about that.)

The anthology starts with a bang (literally) with Jacquie Underdown’s, Digital Intercourse. The title alone did it for me. Jacquie creates a self-assured hero that made me want to eat him (not literally):

‘His desire was palpable… warm, sensual energy that Sammy could touch and taste, so thick she could wring it between her hands…’

I couldn’t go past Buzz by Ros Baxter for another sexy treat. I always thought yoga retreats were hot-beds of sexual tension and this story proves it in spades. She describes the invisible lover as a ‘…dark streak of sexy menace…’ (love it!) and when he finally gets to our heroine this is how he does it (her) ‘One leg pushed between hers, opening them with bone-melting slow insistence.’

My absolute favourite though was Melanie Saward’s very cute Twitter tale, M@tchmaker. No sex in this one, but a whole lot of funny. The story is cleverly told in a series of revealing tweets and reflects exactly the kind of chat that goes on in that medium. It’s the last story in the collection and left me smiling as I turned out the light last night.

URL Love is fluffy, there’s no denying it. But it’s quality fluff, an easy pre-bedtime or public transport read to be consumed in small bites or swallowed in a sweet lump, like your favourite chocolate cake. And at $2.99 it’s a lot cheaper than the cake.

Available from all good e-tailers such as Apple and Amazon. Go grab one – you know you want to. 😉

Journey to the land of the digital unknown

In early 2012 HarperCollinsPublishers (HCP) Publishing Director, Shona Martyn, and Head of Digital, Mark Higginson, gathered together a small but intrepid group of staff from various departments and issued a challenge: to go where no traditional, book-loving trade publisher had gone before — into the land of the digital unknown.

From this humble beginning the insightful and very excited HCP staff have put together (thus far) two unique digital publications.

The second release goes first because it’s closer to my heart. {Beware – here comes some shameless self promotion}. One of my sexy stories written under my non de plume (R rated warning – especially for family members) was accepted for publication in URL Love. (Cue cheering and bowing!)

URL Love should be a winner given the frenzy that is 50 Shades of ‘OMG I’m sick of hearing about it.’ URL LOVE is all about hot cyber romance – love stories involving text messages, Facebook, online dating, emails and tweets. URL Love is a collection of ten sexy, sweet and sassy stories about love in the digital age. For fans of E L James, Marian Keyes and everyone in between!

This one-off digital collection will be released on Monday 17 September. It sells at AU$2.99 (bargain!) through e-tailers such as Apple and Amazon. The URL Love Facebook page is a bit of fun. For a dose of corny have a listen to the audio  of HCP staff reading excerpts from three of the stories.

I’ll be posting a completely unbiased review (of all stories bar my own) – next week.

The other ebook is Corrupted Classics. Not fare for the faint of heart, Corrupted Classics is a collection of reworked scenes from classic novels such as Alice in Wonderland (‘Alice in Zombieland’), Robin Hood (‘Hood and his Undead Men’) and The Iliad (‘Hector the Undead Prince of Troy’).

As you can tell from the cover, it’s a niche publication aimed at flesh-eating-zombie-loving-horror-fiends (of which I’m not one – horses for courses and all that). Personally I couldn’t bring myself to read it, but Shelley Rae at Book’d Out gives it a positive review. The ebook was released today (14 September) and retails at $1.99! What can you get for 2 bucks these days? At that price, who cares if you don’t like it. I lose more money than that on rides at Luna Park. For a bit of added fun there is also a Corrupted Classics Facebook page and trailer.

For the love of a brumby

Review: Brumby’s Run by Jenny Scoullar

Confessions first. Jenny Scoullar is a mate of mine. We’re in the same writing group together – the inimitable LLG’s (Little Lonsdale Group). Jenny’s first book, Wasp Season, a contemporary environmental thriller, was published in 2008 and I’m ashamed to admit I’m yet to read it. From the small excerpts I have read, I notice that Jenny writes about the natural world, animals in particular, with an intense familiarity that’s quite unique in the literary field.

When I came to read her second novel, the recently released ‘Brumby’s Run’, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Knowing that it is a rural romance, I wondered if Jenny would still manage to capture her clear passion for the world of animals within the context of a traditional love story. I can honestly say that she not only managed it, she trumped it with gusto.

If you’ve ever loved horses, longed to work with them or own one, you will love this book. If you are a lover of wilderness and the freedom that comes with wandering uninhabited places, you will love this book. If you enjoy a tender romance and the tangle of family tensions and secrets, you will love this book.

Brumby’s Run pays homage to the complexity of the Australian rural landscape and the people who live within it. Sam and Charlie are twin sisters, separated at birth and by upbringings that couldn’t be more different. The story opens when Sam, who has always believed she is the birth child of her parents, discovers she is adopted and her ill twin sister needs her help to get well. Sam escapes the suffocating expectations of her mother and moves to Charlie’s birthplace, Brumby’s Run. While the focus of the novel is on the budding romance between Sam and nearby neighbour, Drew, Jenny doesn’t balk from confronting the issues that face our wild Australian brumbies and the preservation of the sensitive high country environment. Jenny’s awareness of the lives of these magnificent horses and the impact of high country grazing on native flora and fauna is palpable through the eyes of her characters. It’s a hard topic, particularly in this genre, and she tackles it with grace, empathy and beautiful prose. While this genre isn’t really my thing, I can’t help but admire what Jenny has achieved with it, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll tackle in her next book, Firewater, due out with Penguin in 2013.

50 shades of revolution

If a book publisher’s sales rep had walked into a Coles buyers office 12months ago and said, ‘We’ve got this really raunchy book that will sell like hotcakes, how many do you want for your supermarkets?’ – I reckon they would have been laughed out of the office with a derisive – ‘We don’t sell smut in our family supermarket!’ hurled after them.

Who would have guessed that 50 Shades of Grey would have gained so much traction in 6 months that our major supermarket retailers would be stocking it alongside chocolate bars and loaves of bread? No one. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. A poorly written, sexy book is now available in 50 shades of shops, from supermarkets to indie bookshops. Beyond the question ‘why?’, which has already been examined ad nauseum, is another question I find intriguing – to what end? What effect is the hunger for erotic fiction having on its readers and their relationships?

Our world has already had one sexual revolution. It happened about fifty years ago, alongside the women’s liberation movement, when women who’d kept the Western world ticking over in during the war years discovered a meaningless life in an apron is no match for a meaningless job on a factory floor making parachutes and ammunition.

At the time women were breaking free of the social bonds that had kept them leading relatively futile lives maintaining perfect homes and volunteering on hospital fund raising committees. Women wrote rebellious books and did rebellious things, like burning their bra’s and refusing to make the bosses coffee. They asserted their equal rights and freedom of choice on issues like abortion, work, pay and sex. Social attitudes towards female sexuality shifted significantly. Because of the pill, women now had the freedom to say yes – and because of women’s liberation, women now had the freedom to say no.

Fifty years on Western cultures are much more accepting and supportive of everyone’s sexual choices and proclivities, yet it would appear that the liberation of women’s sexuality was never quite complete. With all the sexual freedom women have now, contemporary attitudes toward female sexuality are still restrained by outdated moralities and definitions. The word ‘slut’ is still a derogatory term, reporting rape is still an issue because women fear they won’t be believed, and our beloved Bettina Arndt believes it’s extraordinary that fifty years after sex was ‘revolutionised’ ‘…the world is full of women who feel absolutely entitled to shut up shop if they’re not interested.’

Bettina recently presented at the Wheelers Centre on why sex matters so much to men. Her research shows that, while men continue to crave physical intimacy with the woman they marry, long term domesticity kills desire in women (personally I don’t know why this is a surprise). She claims that, these days, women no longer view sex as an obligation in marriage (intimating that they should) and, because they are the ones controlling the sexual purse strings, men simply aren’t getting enough – which is, apparently, a tragedy.

Then along comes 50 Shades and the women Bettina believes should be ‘choosing’ desire instead of waiting for it to ‘descend’ upon them, are devouring smut with an appetite rivalling a teenage boy after a vigorous footy match. Women’s hunger for erotic fiction tells me that, contrary to Bettina’s assertion, women’s libido is not dead, it’s just dormant. What 50 Shades and its progeny are doing is fanning the embers of longing within women. Erotic fiction is reminding women that being desired, and desirous, feels wonderful.

50 Shades has unlocked something that has always existed within women. I’m not the expert Bettina is, but I know one thing is true – women love to have sex when it’s worth having – and herein lies the problem. Many men can’t be bothered with the kind of sex many women want. They don’t understand the sensual complexities of a woman’s body, nor have they been initiated into the joys of physical and emotional intimacy for their own sake. A lot of men have fairly limited ideas of what constitutes eroticism, which is why women are flocking to supermarkets to buy 50 Shades in droves. This pap is waking up women’s latent desire for the ever-elusive ‘more’.

What interests me most is what effect this phenomena is having in couple’s bedrooms. I suspect there’s a quiet revolution going on behind closed doors, where the women Bettina talks about are inviting their partners into a new kind of sexual relationship. It’s possible that erotic fiction is giving women who’d previously ‘shut up shop’ the confidence to articulate their desires and reopen the shop doors – but perhaps to discerning customers only. So pay attention lads, if you’re willing to learn how to ‘make love’ rather than ‘have sex’ this could be your big chance to break the drought.

7 Things I learned from my grandmother

Phyllis Ward – affectionately known in my family as ‘Mother’ – died on 22^nd July 2012 aged 93. She was my much loved grandmother and the last of my grandparents to pass away.

Ninety three is old – especially when you consider what she’d seen in her lifetime. Aside from the obvious things there was toilet paper, paracetamol, vinyl, plastic bags, supermarkets, seasonal fashion, and long range weather forecasts. My grandmother lived in an era when people started work at 13 years of age, when houses were built without running water, bathrooms or toilets, when baked bread was considered a convenience food and young people died of pneumonia. She lived through nearly a century of rapid and profound social, economic and technological change, and given her long life experience, I want to share with you some of the wisdom I gleaned from her while she was alive.

Things I learned from my grandmother.

1. Sit up straight, put your shoulders back.

While this sounds like a piece of advice from Ms Havershams School of Deportment for Elegant Ladies, it means so much more than simply holding oneself erect. My grandmother believed in dignity, which was why watching her dissolve into dementia was so painful. She was always well turned out and taught me to take pride in myself and to always walk with my head held high.

2. Slippers are not for wearing outside.

I learned this golden gem when I was only 4 or 5 years old. She’d bought me a new pair of slippers with Mickey Mouse embroidered on the toes. I was mighty proud of those slippers and she growled at me when she found me playing in them outside in the empty chook shed.

It took me a long time to understand the value of this advice. Everything has its purpose (including indoor footwear) and to ruin things by using them inappropriately is not only wasteful, it’s disrespectful of the object itself. If you want something to last take care of it, use it properly and appropriately. Needless to say I still can’t wear my slippers outside.

3. Be careful to whom you address the following question: How are you?

My grandmother was so very right about this one. The world is full of tyre kickers and time wasters who are just waiting for an opportunity to fill your ears with their pointless whining. What you should do is smile politely (because manners are important too), say hello and keep pushing that walker away from them as quickly as possible. If the very same question is directed at you, you are not obliged to answer. Just tell them to mind their own business – which my grandmother did – often.

4. You can’t expect to always get along with your life partner.

While this seems like a no brainer, it’s the one truth most people forget when they’re making their starry eyed marriage vows. There is a no nonsense honesty about this advice I have always valued. It reminds me, especially at those times when I have to restrain myself from poking someone I love in the eye, that I’m not perfect and I’m probably lucky to still have my own eyesight.

Personally I think her list is a bit short. She should have included daughters and sons, dogs, other random family members, work colleagues, friends and cats.

5. History is important.

My grandmother and grandfather spent a lot of time and money researching their respective family histories. Thanks to my grandmother I can claim to be partly descended from the Huguenots, French blue blood no less, which would have to balance out all that wild Scottish/Irish  temper – surely?

But it’s not just about genealogy and all those confusing circles and squares in a family tree. It’s about tribe. My grandmother taught me that I belong, that I am part of something larger than myself – it’s called family.

6. Laughter is a form of forgiveness – and saying sorry.

Whenever my grandmother was angry with me, she’d soothe my hurt or irritated feelings with a joke, mostly at her own expense. Try it. If you’re annoyed with someone, if you’re arguing over something petty, if there’s tension in the air, take a look at yourself and how ridiculous you’re being and laugh. It’s a great tension breaker – especially with kids.

7. You don’t need to wear underwear to bed because it’s good to give your bottom a rest at night.

For some reason this bizarre and meaningless piece of advice, offered to me when I was very young, fresh out of the bath and ready to climb into my bloomers and pyjamas, has stayed with me. So much so I offered it to my own daughter a few years ago and she recently repeated it to a friend during a sleepover. This is where superstitions begin. I’m powerless to stop it now. No doubt my descendents 50 years from now will be refusing to wear underwear to bed because Mother said so. I’m not sure how happy she’d be that this will be her lasting legacy, but I reckon she’d get a bloody good laugh out of it. And given the enormous value of her other pieces of advice, I think she’s allowed one real dud.

I am relieved that my grandmother is free of the vast indignities and discomforts of old age. Her spirit, and her strange advice, will live on through her children, grandchildren and great grand children.

Farewell, Mother, grandmother of mine.

I love you, I miss you, rest well, in peace.

Choccie Royal & a cuppa? Review The Fine Colour of Rust: Paddy O’Reilly

I had occasion to meet Paddy O’Reilly late last year. At the time I had to hide my gob-smacked ‘WOW A REAL WRITER’ sentiments as she awarded me my first major short story prize (see 10 Dec 2011 post The One that Won). What impressed me about Paddy was her no-nonsense, down-to-earth passion for writing. Here was someone who spoke to me seriously about my writing, was genuinely interested in my career as a writer and wanted to support me in achieving my publishing goals. What a cool drink of water!

This impression was reinforced when I again connected with Paddy at the Emerging Writers Festival in May. I was impressed she a) remembered me, and b) listened to how my writing was going without her eyes glazing over (not an experience I’m used to in daily life).

Paddy is one of Australia’s national treasures when it comes to literature. She’s won a stack of national and international awards with her long list of publishing credits. Over the past ten years her work has become an integral part of Australia’s cultural landscape (check out her website for the long version of her accomplishments).

It took me too long to get around to reading this book, but I’m so glad I did. Beforehand I’d been trailing through erotic fiction (including the notorious 50 Shades), so The Fine Colour of Rust came as a welcome relief from the adolescent ‘Holy crap – Whoa – Arrrrggghhh’ I’d been subjecting my poor mind to.

O’Reilly’s taste for all that is quintessential about Australian character is palpable in this book. It’s a relief to read about uniquely Australian characters without the sentimentality or stereotyping so common in Australian narratives. These people are flawed and funny and believable because of it. It’s a laugh out loud story filled with recognisable characters and laconic dialogue reminiscent of Sea Change (still one of my all time favourite TV series).

The main character, Loretta Boskovic, a self-proclaimed ‘old scrag’, thinks and speaks in vivid country town lingo. Having grown up in the country myself, there is much I recognise about the landscape, social mores and way of life at the centre of this story. It was like coming home to visit rellies I haven’t seen in a while. City life brings a pace and sophistication that has no place in a town like Gunapan (the fictitious town where Loretta lives), and it was nice to be able to put my guard down for a while and join in the scoffing of Chocolate Royals and tepid tea.

This book is filled with golden moments of insight and humour – from Loretta’s two inherited lawn mowers (goats) named Panic and Terror; to the hilarious account of Hector the butcher dismembering a cow carcass in an effort to impress a visiting Minister; to the heart wrenching effects of illness on Loretta’s special relationship with Norm the junk man. This book’s honesty is what makes it funny. The prose literally sparkles with wit and is littered with gems like this one:

‘…clustered around the small waterhole like ants at a droplet of sugar water.’

It was the kind of book I couldn’t wait to get back to, yet savoured slowly because I didn’t want it to end. Moreover, I highly recommend it as a perfect remedy for mental indigestion caused by over consumption of low-brow popular erotic fiction.