Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living
Carrie Tiffany. Picador, 2005. ISBN 0 330 42191 3, RRP $22
Australia, 1934. The Better Farming Train snakes its way through the countryside, spreading industry and science, promising agricultural riches. Jean—the dreamy idealist, endearingly referring to herself as a ‘baking technician’—meets Robert—the ‘soil-taster’ who believes it possible to capture the war with an equation—and together they become the poster image of the modernist couple.
This Australia is oppressive and dusty in every way: drought, mouse plagues, sand drifts, crops that won’t grow, utter phallo-centrism. But it’s also very real, so tangible that the text feels invisible; and the prose: stark, economic, without pretension or curly decoration. Like a child yet to learn the euphemistic language of adults.
Tiffany’s novel is about many things: knowledge as capital; an Australian landscape that refuses to be tamed; latent sexuality and desire. I expected quirky and pleasant, not a darkness infusing every word, and definitely not the dystopic nature of it as a feminist text. This is Australian history as herstory, in the tradition of Jean Bedford’s Sister Kate. Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living won’t change your life, but it is definitely worth a read.
Brooke Davis
Does my head look big in this?
Randa Abdel-Fattah. Pan Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 0 330 42185 9, RRP $16.95
Most people would agree that the VCE is hard enough by itself for most teenagers to deal with. Add to that a major religious commitment, a first romance, a school bully, and the trials and tribulations of being 16, and you have the very entertaining novel Does my head look big in this?
Following in the footsteps of Looking for Alibrandi, the novel takes us into the life of 16-year-old Amal, an Australian-born Muslim girl who is struggling with her identity. The novel opens with Amal’s decision to wear her hijab ‘full-time’, and her apprehensions about how those around her will react. She confronts her decision with humour, telling one classmate she is wearing the hijab as a part of a hair regrowth program.
Randa Abdel-Fattah does a great job of combining Amal’s faith with a storyline that young to mid-teenage readers will like. The novel is relevant, as Amal and her friends deal with issues such as school, parents, racism, body image, religion, bullying and diversity.
Elizabeth Allen
Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs
Gerald Murnane. Giramondo, 2005. ISBN 1 920 88209 X, RRP $24.95
Some writers argue; some tell stories. Gerald