The Address Book

Jane Clifton's The Address Book caught my eye as I was browsing Brotherhood Books (okay, they had a sale on and I needed to beef up my order). I'd been looking out for this book for a couple years at the library but never tracked it down, so this was an excellent find.

Born in Gibraltar, an army brat whose family shifted between the UK, Germany and Malaysia before emigrating to Australia when Jane was 13, Clifton has lived in 32 homes. In this project, she reminisces about the period of her life spent at each address before revisiting the place as it is now, to see if memory matches reality, how much has changed, and whether any new memories are unearthed by the experience. Clifton's parents both died pretty young, so it's also a journey of discovery about her mum and dad and their sometimes turbulent relationship. The book falls roughly into two halves, with the second part covering numerous Melbourne addresses, mostly around the inner suburbs, familiar territory to me. This is a chatty, engaging memoir, though the section devoted to Clifton's early career as a muso/performer in 70s Melbourne contained a touch more detail than I really needed. But she also discusses her stint in Prisoner (Cell Block H for overseas viewers) and her life as a pop star (check out her biggest hit 'Girl on the Wall' on YouTube, she's right, someone really needs to cover this song, which is still all too relevant today and stands up surprisingly well).

As someone who has lived at twenty two addresses myself, I could relate to Clifton's pilgrimage, and I would love to do a journey like this myself. Though she's about ten years older than me, there was a certain amount of overlap in our Fitzroy/Carlton experiences and share house -- sorry, 'collective house' life. I hadn't realised that Clifton was part of Helen Garner's Monkey Grip crowd, and appears in the book under the name of Angela. Amusingly, when the movie was being cast, she decided to audition for the part of Angela but was told she couldn't sing or act well enough to play -- herself! Her part was ultimately taken by Chrissy Amphlett.

I seem to have been reading a lot about place and home this year. This book was a fun, often moving slant on the topic.

EDIT: Just as I finished writing this post, I happened to hear Greig Pickhaver on the radio talking about his life, and he was also a member of that gang, part of the Australian Performing Group that Clifton belonged to; she mentioned that he used to build loft beds for everyone! Another of those weird connections that so often seem to accompany the reading of a book...

Merry Christmas

Well, it's that time of year again -- the time of Best Ofs, recaps, summaries and reflections on the year gone by.

To be frank, 2015 has been a weird and pretty horrible year for my family. In March, my dad suffered a massive stroke that saw him almost die, and a month-long stay in hospital was followed by a refusal of rehab and a swift eviction into permanent care. Fortunately, though he still requires a high degree of care, his condition has improved hugely since then -- he can now stand and walk with a cane (very unsteadily, and not far), and his concentration is much better. He still can't speak, or move his right hand or arm, but sensation and movement are returning to his right leg. But he is still with us, and still very much the familiar personality of before.

My mother has been staying with us, and lately work has begun on a granny flat where hopefully Dad will be able to stay with her -- maybe just for occasional sleepovers, maybe permanently, depending on his progress. 

It's been a sudden and disconcerting somersault in family dynamics. When I was younger, my parents cared for me, protected and supported me, were a safe haven to run to, a safety net in times of trouble; when I had kids of my own, I still looked to my mum and dad for help and support, but now we jogged along as peers, two sets of adults independently navigating many of the same problems and pitfalls. But with Dad's stroke, overnight, the relationship of dependence has turned on its head; the change is complete and absolute. Suddenly my parents are depending totally on my partner and me. It's a situation which I've vaguely dreaded for years as Mum and Dad grew older, and started having health scares. But now it's finally here, it's not such a terrible burden as I feared; it feels like this the pattern is playing itself out the way it is supposed to.

Meanwhile, my two girls are growing up fast -- almost are grown up! One transformed (also seemingly overnight) into a leggy, confident, texting and typing teen with a hectic social life and a sense of responsibility about homework. The other has also matured and blossomed academically, feeling her way already, perhaps, into her chosen field of passion.

I finished one manuscript and started another -- the first year for ages I've been able to say that! And also I have more ideas for books I want to write, instead of blank dismay, and that's a good feeling, too.

Soon I'll do my annual reading round-up -- I suspect there'll a lot of comfort reading in there, because I've need to escape more than ever this year!

I wish you all a festive and peaceful holiday season, and I hope you've enjoyed a less turbulent year than my family has endured. And I wish us all calm waters ahead for 2016. Merry Christmas. 

Coconut

I sought out Coconut by Kopano Matlwa from a list of YA books from non-Anglo countries that was published in The Guardian a while ago, and was surprised to see it pop up at Brotherhood Books. It's a South African edition, too, the third reprint in two years, so it must have done pretty well. It won the European Union Literary award, which I must admit I had never heard of, and is, strangely, a prize for first-time South African novelists.

This was an intriguing glimpse into a world that I know little about. I hardly ever read African books, let alone African YA, and this was a voice I had never heard before, and a lively, energetic and perceptive voice at that. Matlwa is obviously a young writer, and this novel has some of the faults that most young writers fall into -- there are clear autobiographical elements (not necessarily a fault, but sometimes clumsy), and there is a focus on character to the absolute exclusion (in this case) of plot. 

The book is narrated in two voices, in two distinct, but overlapping halves: Ofilwe is the daughter of a nouveau-riche black family who live in a gated, mostly white community. Ofilwe longs to reconnect with the traditional culture the family has abandoned in a desperate attempt to fit in with white society. Fikile is a waitress at their regular coffee shop, outside their world but determined to claw her way in by any means possible. Fiks is a poignant figure, at first seeming confident and strong, but secretly very vulnerable. Each girl sits on either side of a racial divide that seems to make them both equally unhappy.

This novel is a window into a country which has undergone tremendous upheaval in recent years, and where racial lines are supposed to be blurring, but where the burden is history is too heavy to be easily thrown off. Not a book I would normally have picked up, but that was kind of the point of the exercise.

Queen Bees and Wannabes

Penni Russon and I both read Rosalind Wiseman's book back in about 2008 when we were preparing to write books for the Girlfriend Fiction series and were worried we'd forgotten what it was like to be a teenage girl. At that stage we had four daughters between us, aged from about 3 to 7.

Fast forward to today, and my daughters are 11 and 14, and the world of Queen Bees and Wannabes has taken on a new and vivid reality as my girls negotiate adolescence, friendships, burgeoning sexuality, school pressures, and all the rest of it. This books is crammed with illuminating information and food for thought for parents. The ultimate accolade must be that Ms 14 picked it up, skimmed through the 'Parties' chapter and said, 'Hm, there's some really good advice in here.' So I think I might leave it lying around for a while...

Wiseman has run workshops for teenagers for many years and she's seen and heard it all. She is refreshingly non-judgmental, but she is firm and wise, stressing the need to keep respectful communication alive, even when you feel like killing each other! Some of her advice must have stuck from all those years ago because I felt tentatively that I'm not doing such a bad job (so far...) One of her rules is to pick your battles; forget about fighting over hair and clothes, you'll never win, and she'll start sneaking around you. Once you've lost her trust and respect, it's all over. But a 'Loving Hard-Ass Parent' stands a chance of maintaining a connection when it really counts.

I'm very glad I bought this, though it was annoying that this edition (from the UK, though the text seems unchanged from the US version) is peppered with typos. Not just recommended reading for the mothers (and fathers) of teenage girls (and boys!) -- this is essential.

D-Day

Yesterday I did something that I haven't done for quite some time (so long that I'm afraid to check exactly): I sent off a manuscript.

When I first started out in this business, sending off a manuscript meant printing out a thick wad of paper and popping an Express Post envelope into the mailbox. Now it means clicking 'attach' to an email, and hitting 'Send'. But in both cases, it means sending up a little prayer that my story might be looked upon favourably by those who read it.

I've been working on this novel for many months. I actually finished one version, and then completely rewrote it, taking out a couple of key characters and inserting a new and different one. It's a kind of sequel to the Chanters of Tremaris series, which were the first books I ever had published. I was hoping it would be a relaxing, fun experience — revisiting a world which has been very good to me, and immersing myself again in high fantasy, which I haven't written for several years. And to a certain extent, that was true. But I also got caught up in the problems of back-story — how much to reveal, how much to assume, how much to keep hidden, in case new readers wanted to go back to the beginning? (That was why I cut out those two awkward characters.)

Events in the real world also got in the way. I was sick, my dad had a stroke. I couldn't (can't) spend as much time writing as I used to. And some days all I wanted to do was to lie on my bed and read; writing was work and I didn't have the energy to wrestle with it.

I'm prepared (I am always prepared!) for the possibility that my publishers might decline. In that case, I'm hoping there are enough Tremaris devotees out there to make self-publishing a viable option. It will be something new to learn, anyway, and these days I am all in favour of Learning New Things (have I mentioned my piano lessons?)

But the good news is, I have three ideas to work on next! So back to the keyboard I go…because even after you've 'finished' one book, this job of writing is never done.

The Angel of Mons

You know how sometimes you finish reading one book, and the book you're intending to read next is all the way over the other side of the room, so instead you pick up the book that happens to be lying around within reach, and you read that first? That's what happened here… I bought David Clarke's The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians for Michael at the library book sale, because it was about the First World War, which is His Thing, and also, after The Woman In Black, I was in the mood for more ghost stories.

I like to think (after many years of marriage) that I'm reasonably well-informed about WWI, but I must confess that I had only vaguely heard of the story of the Angel of Mons. Apparently after one of the earliest battles of the war, when the hugely outnumbered British forces managed to escape being completely wiped out by the mighty German Army, stories began to circulate that the British soldiers had been miraculously saved at Mons by the intervention of supernatural forces -- a cloud, a bright light, ghostly soldiers from Agincourt, St George, Joan of Arc, or (as the story finally settled) a troop of angels.

But the book turned out to be less about ghostly visitations and visions, and more about the power of rumour, propaganda and legend in times of severe social upheaval and fear. There was no direct evidence that the supernatural intervention took place; no reliable eyewitnesses were ever tracked down, and the story always had that familiar 'urban myth' air about it -- a friend of a nurse, who spoke to a soldier, whose brother had definitely seen something that day… It seems that the story was officially encouraged, not in the immediate aftermath of the battle itself, but in the dire months that followed, when the war looked bad for the Allies. It was comforting and socially useful for people to believe that God was literally on their side -- to the point of personally intervening to protect the British troops.

This was a very well-researched book (which was probably more heavy on the detail than I really needed it to be!), but an interesting read nonetheless. Something to think about, and watch out for, in our own scary times: what are the useful legends and apocryphal stories that our government might like us to believe?

The 10pm Question

The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi is another book that's been on my radar for a while, and also been sitting in the pile beside the bed for an unconscionably long time. I'm making an effort to work my way through some of the books that have been there for a while, and so far the success rate has been striking! What a lovely, lovely book.

Frankie is 12, and his life is busy, filled with annoying siblings, larger than life relatives, cricket, birds, rituals, errands, private projects, lists and homework. He has a best friend, Gigs, who shares most of his interests, and a new friend, Sydney -- not his girlfriend! -- who is interesting and chaotic and asks all the questions that other people don't dare to ask… like, why hasn't Frankie's Ma left the house in nine years? Because Frankie's life is also filled with a secret undercurrent of constant worry -- about his health, about his mother, and about himself.

This is a book about anxiety, and it beautifully and sympathetically takes us into the mind of a chronically anxious pre-teen. I could relate to quite a lot of it -- the obsessive list-making in bed, for one thing, and also Frankie's mother's need to stay safely inside her own house FOREVER. I suppose with such potentially dark subject matter, de Goldi had to balance the mood with lots of cheerful material about Frankie's quirky family, and while they are very real and totally loveable (even grumpy, sarcastic teenage sister Gordana, who I think might be living in my house), the novel sometimes veered close to too much quirk-territory. I also found the structure slightly confusing -- each chapter jumps forward two weeks, and we then get a recap of events that have occurred in the past fortnight, so there is a lot of 'Frankie had thought… Sydney had said…' which made for a slightly clunky read in places.

But these are mere quibbles. For being a book set in New Zealand (second one in two weeks -- weird), for its warmth and humour and gentleness, I loved this book. It hits my sweet spot -- between childrens' and YA. On the very first page, there is a grumpy older sister who steals the last muesli bar, an irrational fear of ants, and a teacher called Mr A. I think my (anxious) Ms 11 will find a lot to relate to.

PS Things You Find in Books
My ex-library copy of The 10pm Question had a photo inside it. Who are these lovely young people? Which of them used this photo as a bookmark and forgot to retrieve it? Anyway, I blow you all a kiss. You have good taste in books.

The Books I Didn't Buy...

The Darebin library book sale was on this weekend. I must admit I had an ulterior motive this time as I had a box of books I wanted to off-load -- I've been buying so many from Brotherhood Books, and we need to cull a bit anyway in view of our impending reno. So I had a stack of donations with me.

But the best intentions go awry… Ms 14 and I went together, and we came away with rather a big bag of loot. Ms 14 was responsible for most of it -- she bought some CD sets to teach herself Italian and French (ambitious -- she's planning a Family French Friday when we will all learn French together, yeah well, we'll see about that…), and a First Aid book, because she can't get enough of those. I bought a book about ghost soldiers in WWI for Michael, and a couple of silly Trinny and Susannah books because I can't resist them, and they're only a dollar! (I wish they would come to my house and tell me what to wear.) And I bought a Kate Atkinson family saga/mystery primarily for my mum.

But I was most proud of myself because of the books I picked up, and then put down again. In the past I've been guilty of picking up books that I feel I ought to read (because they only cost a dollar!) and then feeling bad as they moulder unread beside my bed because I don't really want to read them. For the Term of His Natural Life? Political biographies? That huge literary best seller from a few years ago that makes me feel exhausted just looking at it? No. This time I left them all alone.

The Woman In Black

I don't like scary movies, but I do enjoy a good ghost story, and this modern classic by Susan Hill has been on my radar for a long time. I picked up the movie tie-in edition from Brotherhood Books, and was surprised at how slender it was -- I'd been expecting a fat clunker! But this relatively short tale certainly punches above its weight, and is all the more effective for its economy. In this case, less is more.

Young solicitor Arthur Kipps is quite excited at first when he's sent on a solo mission to sort out a dead woman's estate. But the eerie, isolated Eel Marsh House, set on the end of a causeway that's submerged at high tide, and beset by swirling mists, holds some sinister secrets…

Chills aplenty, simple but effective, and though it was published in 1983, stylistically it reads like a high Victorian ghost story (though it's certainly not a difficult read). This actually confused me in places, as I started out picturing the story taking place in Sherlock Holmes' London (peasouper fogs, fusty lawyers' offices, train journeys), and then suddenly there were motor cars and telephones and electric lights! I'm still not entirely sure exactly when the novel was supposed to be set. There were references to the ghostly figure's clothing dating from 'sixty years ago', but then the date on her gravestone was '190--', and I can't make out how that would possibly work!

I haven't seen the film, though I might if my 14 year old is keen (she is reading the book after me). From the google images, they seem to have done their best to make Daniel Radcliffe look like David Tennant. Which is not necessarily a bad thing...

Who Calls From Afar?

I borrowed Who Calls From Afar? by Hesba Brinsmead as part of my evening ladies' book group Hesba Brinsmead mini-readathon (not the Convent book group, the other one -- do keep up!)

I think I've read four Brinsmead novels now, and although they all had wildly different settings (this one takes place in the NSW country town of Moree, at the earth station there), and explore very different topics (gemstone prospecting, urban gangs, this time space communication!), there are common themes that recur in all the books. The importance of making connections between people is probably the most significant; an appreciation of the beauty of the natural world is another.

Brinsmead certainly wasn't afraid to tackle a wide range of geographic locations or social milieux. Published in 1971, Who Calls From Afar? tells of young Lyn, who finds a job as secretary at the Moree earth station, one step in the string of bases passing on satellite signals from geo-stationary orbit to headquarters in America. Lyn has felt lonely in the big city; communication, the failure to communicate, the need to communicate, is the keynote of this book. On the eve of the moon landing, a NASA bigwig becomes stranded in the outback and a road trip ensues with a cast of various characters.

I wonder what Brinsmead would have made of this moment in time, with everybody both hyper-connected and yet more atomised and individual than ever before?

For me, this is not the most successful of Hesba Brinsmead's novels -- my favourite is still the luminous Pastures of the Blue Crane, her debut. Despite the theoretically interesting subject matter, WCFA? seemed to be missing some essential emotional element that made for an ultimately unsatisfying read.

The Wild Places

Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is so beautiful I had to ration it, reading only a chapter or two between other books, eking it out and savouring it. It's not a book to gorge on; it's a book to read slowly and carefully, like a meditation.

I found this on Brotherhood Books after seeing it recommended in The Week (now my mum lives with us, I get to read my parents' subscription copy of The Week as soon as it arrives). I also want to get hold of his later books, Landmarks and The Old Ways.

Macfarlane starts out this journey wanting to experience and describe the wild places of Britain; as he thinks of it, the pockets of wilderness left untouched by human interference, the mountaintops and isolated moors, the remote, the pristine. And he does find those places, and he is exhilarated and frightened by them. But about halfway through his pilgrimage, he finds his internal definition of 'wildness' changing into something more dynamic and vigorous -- the tangle of plants thrusting from a ditch into the light, the inside of a hedgerow. He comes to see wildness not as something separate from humanity, but intertwined, parallel and within our reach, in small, everyday moments -- a dandelion bursting from a crack in the pavement, the tossing of treetops in a storm.

Reading this book was an almost spiritual experience for me. Macfarlane's observations are both precise and radiant, his use of language halfway between poetry and prayer. Is it better to read about sleeping out on a snowbound mountaintop, or to actually experience it? For me, the reading is better, because I get to appreciate the beautiful words as well as imagining the crispness of the moonlight, the sheen of the snow… Hm, this might be betraying an old bias of mine that favours imagination over the real. That's something I'd like to write about one day.

Anyway, this book is highly recommended. If anyone knows of an Australian equivalent, please let me know. I would love Robert Macfarlane to turn his keen eye on our wilderness. Has anyone invited him?

The Forrests

I'm ashamed to say how long ago it's been since my friend Penni lent me Emily Perkins' The Forrests. 'It's good,' she assured me, and it was.

A novel in short scenes, each chapter tells an incident from a life, the life of Dorothy Forrest, from her chaotic, slip-shod childhood, through marriage and children and love and lust and tragedy, all the way to her deathbed. The stories of her siblings, parents, children, friends, weave in and out of the central story. We jump several years at a time; suddenly there are extra children, retrospectively we learn of catastrophe narrowly escaped, or brutally, unexpectedly falling, a blade from the sky.

The writing is extraordinary, dense with observation and sensory detail that reads almost like poetry. It's a reminder that even the most ordinary of days contains droplets of wonder, humour, memory and pathos. The thread that pulls the story together is Dorothy's lifelong connection to Daniel, the sort-of brother who became her secret lover and then ran away. Even when he spends decades absent from her life, his memory haunts her.

Perkins is very good on siblings, and children, and marriage -- I don't know how old she is, she doesn't seem to be that old, but her observations of how it feels to be inside every stage of life feel true, as if she's lived a long life and remembered everything. The book is set in New Zealand, but the details feel true of an Australian life, too -- suburban shops, a night in a hospital, a boozy reunion, a commune in the bush.

So, Penni, you can have it back now. Sorry it took me so long.

More Thoughts on Laurinda...

Thoughts prompted by Laurinda, perhaps I should say, rather than reflections on the book itself.

I felt quite ambivalent reading this novel, and I'm not sure if that ambivalence came from Alice Pung herself or if it's my own attitude to my education which I'm projecting onto Lucy's story. As I said before, I also went to a posh private girls' school (Presbyterian Ladies' College), and I was a scholarship girl. There is no way that my family could have afforded to send me there and pay the fees, though quite a few of my contemporaries were not particularly wealthy. Their attendance at the school was pretty much the only luxury their families allowed themselves (I should add that the fees weren't at the astronomical levels they seem to sit at today, either).

Coming straight from living a pretty simple life in PNG, and years of vague money worries, I used to fret that we couldn't afford for me to go on excursions, buy a new blazer, pay for textbooks etc. I never actually had to go without, but I never assumed that I wouldn't. This bred a faint anxiety that dogged me through all my years at school.

Because the school had moved to a new campus in Burwood in the 1950s which was quite ugly and daggy, there was none of that atmosphere of romantic, ancient privilege in the buildings themselves that I found later at Janet Clarke Hall and Melbourne University generally, so our elite, privileged status was not so obvious in our physical environment. But it was constantly drummed into us that we were a) very lucky and b) obliged to pay for that luck by 'giving back' -- through leadership, social work, good causes etc. The emphasis was less on encouraging ambition for ourselves, and more on what we could do For Others. It was just assumed that we would achieve for ourselves, I think.

I adored school and I was (mostly) very happy there. I had some wonderful, inspiring teachers, read some amazing books from the fantastic library, and made some good friends. My interests in literature, history, politics, philosophy and social justice were encouraged, and I came out at the end with an excellent HSC score that got me into the university course I wanted. I took it for granted that women could do anything; it wasn't even a question. Our headmistress was an amazing, strong, gracious woman who was a wonderful role model (Joan Montgomery), and oat of our teachers were women. I was very disappointed when, after I left, the church appointed a male principal.

But.

I did well academically in the supportive environment of school, but I struggled in the self-directed free-for-all of university. I didn't really get how university worked, and I was dazzled and paralysed by the presence of boys. Socially, I was completely out of my depth. I don't blame my school for that, but it didn't help. It took me so long to adjust to life outside school that I wasted a lot of my years at uni. (It also didn't help that I was doing the wrong course.) I see the easy, teasing friendships with boys and girls that my daughter is establishing at her state high school, and the way they encourage the students to navigate life outside the school, and I'm envious.

I'm grateful for the opportunities that PLC gave me, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with the begging letters they send me, as an Old Girl, to contribute to the new swimming pool or the performing arts centre or whatever. It's embarrassing, and I feel like it's a betrayal of the ethos they tried to teach me back in the 80s. I was sheltered there, but maybe it would have been better for my development to be a little less sheltered, toughened up a bit.

This has been a long, rambling post. I hoped it might help me disentangle the good from the bad, but it's all still mixed up in my mind. I go to lots of private girls' schools for work, and I instantly feel at home there, comfortable and at ease. The teachers are usually fantastic, and the girls are always lovely, polite and friendly and often very clever -- just like I was.

But I'm not going to send my daughters to any of those schools. Not even if they win scholarships. And I still can't quite articulate why.

Gatty's Tale

Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland has been sitting next to my bed for so long I've forgotten how and where I acquired it. It's second hand, but not from Brown and Bunting; nor is it an ex-library book, and I'm sure I didn't buy it from Brotherhood Books either. Mystery! Perhaps it was one of those books that turns up in the library book sale, donated by other people?

I read and loved Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy a few years ago, and Gatty's Tale is a stand-alone follow-up to Arthur's story. In this novel, set in the Middle Ages, fifteen year old Gatty is sent to serve as a chamber maid to Lady Gwyneth, who decides to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. With eight companions, including Gatty, they set out on the perilous journey to the Holy Land -- but not all the pilgrims will reach the end of their quest.

Kevin Crossley-Holland's writing is among the best I've ever encountered -- shining, spare, and lit with a bright flame of faith, it's utterly suited to the recreation of the medieval world. But there are striking modern parallels here, too -- principally, the distrust and fear of the 'Saracens' (Muslims) who possess the Holy Land. Gatty comes to realise that Christians, Jews and Saracens are all 'good and bad, mixed up together' and that demonising one race or religion is pointless.

I loved this book, and I really hope that it found the audience that it deserves.

Laurinda

I grabbed Alice Pung's Laurinda the second I saw it on the library shelf (even though I was at the library to return books, not borrow). I've wanted to read this since it came out. I greatly admire Alice Pung as a writer, and I had the pleasure of meeting her in person at a literary festival in Perth a couple of years ago, and she was absolutely lovely. Laurinda is her first work of fiction, and it's a YA novel, so of course I've been hanging out to read it.

I raced through this novel in a day (thanks partly to the fact that I was immobilised in bed). It's the story of Lucy Lam, who wins a scholarship to a prestigious girls' school in Year 10 and finds that she turns into a different person -- quieter, less opinionated -- in her new surroundings. And she soon falls foul of the powerful trio, 'the Cabinet', who are the self-appointed guardians of school excellence, taking it upon themselves to weed out those they perceive as weakening the institution -- feeble teachers, conceited students.

I think I almost felt too invested in this book. I went to a school very like Laurinda (albeit in the 1980s, not the mid-90s, when Pung's book is set), and I was also a scholarship girl (albeit from Upper Ferntree Gully, not Stanley/Footscray) -- and I hasten to add, a very white scholarship girl. But I still found a lot to relate to in Lucy's story. My school was a privileged place, and we were constantly reminded how privileged we were -- but paradoxically, the true sources of our privilege were often invisible to us, and thoroughly internalised.

I did spent rather a lot of the novel silently yelling at Lucy to find some better friends -- or just to give the nice girl from the first chapter another chance (which she eventually does). Lucy's desire to both fit in and also to rebel against the injustices she observes, and her love and loyalty to her family and neighbourhood, mingled with shame and embarrassment toward them, were realistic and moving. I'm still processing how I feel about this book; I think I need to discuss it someone! Any takers out there?