What Book to Read?

Is the description of a book as ‘slow burning’ code for ‘boring’?  This is how Jetty Road (2009) is described on the cover, and I’m sure it’s meant to be complimentary. But I came close to finding the book dull.

Paula and Evie are sisters who live in present day Adelaide. I also live in present day Adelaide, so I was interested to see how the author had written about it.  Adelaide is a pleasant rather than an exciting place to live – it seems Ms Kenneally and I agree about that. The various locations are true to life, but while this means something to me, it’s not a particularly compelling setting for non Adeliadeans. And why call it ‘Jetty Road’, since there’s no mention of that street in the story? Is there supposed to be something mystical about jetties connecting the land and sea? 

Paula is matron of an old people’s home. Evie, after a rather hippy past, is trying to settle down and is working part-time in a child care centre while also writing steamy Mills and Boon style fiction. Paula has a teenage son and a young daughter. Neither of the sisters currently has a partner.

The story is essentially domestic, centring on the daily ups and downs of family life and the search for romance. Will Evie be late picking up her niece from school? Will the man Paula has met at the pub turn out to be the one? Why was it so hard to have a good relationship with their mother? These are familiar problems for many of us, but hardly make for compelling reading. There are some bits that are more dramatic than others – such as the teenager going off the rails and the accidental overdose. And near the end of the story, a figure from Evie’s past makes a reappearance and causes some problems. It can be enjoyable to share other people’s minor dramas, and some writers do it superbly (Anne Tyler, for example), but somehow for me this story never rises above the ordinary.

Paula’s old people’s home is described in some detail, and it certainly sounds a much nicer place than most of the ones I’ve had occasion to visit. Perhaps we could learn from the book something about how our last years could be made much more interesting and creative. Yet in terms of the story, the threat by profit driven bean counters to the way Paula wants her home to run is never explored further, and doesn’t really contribute to the story.

The ordinariness of the story is reinforced by the triteness of the dialogue. The problem with trying to tell it the way it is seems to be that people don’t in fact speak in sequential sentences; it is hard to capture real speech in prose, and approximations that try to use colloquial speech often sound forced. For me, a lot of it doesn’t ring true.

If you like reading about other people’s daily lives, then maybe this slow burning book is for you. But if it’s drama and excitement you’re after, or gripping analysis of character and situation, this is not a good pick.