Bye Beautiful

 

I am reading so much this summer, I'm having trouble keeping up! Julia Lawrinson's Bye, Beautiful was published in 2006, but because it's set in the 1960s, it hasn't dated at all; in some ways, it's more relevant than ever.

Bye, Beautiful transported me to rural Western Australia, a time of sewing your own clothes, shiny new decimal currency, cubes of cheese and pickled onions in a Tupperware wheel -- some echoes of my own 1970s childhood. It's also a time and place of overt, unapologetic racism, shocking to a modern reader, and almost equally shocking misogyny and assumptions about a young woman's path in life. Sandy's sister Marianne is only just seventeen, yet she's engaged and expecting to get married as soon as she finishes school!

Thirteen Sandy herself feels ordinary and dull compared with pretty, vivacious Marianne; she nurses her secrets closely, and she knows that as the new copper's daughter, she will be held to a higher standard than her peers. As the stories and personalities of the new town gradually unfold themselves, I found myself absorbed in this family's troubled relationships, and ached for poor Sandy as she finds herself trapped between impossible loyalties.

I really enjoyed this thoughtful, moving book and I'll be keeping an eye out for Julia Lawrinson's other novels. (Full disclosure: I went to dinner with her once, years ago, and she was lovely.)