Book twenty-five: The Rouseabout

The Rouseabout* (2007)
Rachel Treasure

Rating: 2.75/5

It is really refreshing to read a book about someone from not only the same country, but also around the same age.

Kate Webster is your typical irresponsible early twenty-something. Her wreckless nature, however, doesn’t sit well with her role as a mother to her three year old daughter, Nell. After the latest clash, Kate is forced to accept a transfer back to her home town in Tasmania, and back to the mess she left behind.

Four years earlier had gone to the mainland for university and also to escape the consequences of a dare that saw her successfully scalp Nick McDonnell at a B&S, but also wind up pregnant in the process**.

She returns to the find the rift between her and her father that began with her mother’s death has widened and that while her brother and best friend are around and willing to help, they seem to have become strangely responsible.

On that note, I thought most of the younger characters end up acting very maturely for their ages. I know that the things the characters are doing – getting married, having children – is not that unusual in your early twenties. I don’t know, maybe I have been living in the city for too long.

I guess this is the reason why the shelves of the popular fiction lean more towards characters in their thirties – I suppose you are more able to believe that if a thirty-five year old decides to marry someone they are likely to stick at it. You can trust your happily ever after… although with divorce rates being what they are, probably not.

I will admit that I wanted to shake and/or slap Kate at times and some of the things she did made me cringe (such as drinking when she was pregnant). But I did like her by the end. I think that her irresponsibility at the beginning made her character more realistic as well as more interesting. While selfish characters usually annoy me no end, she wasn’t completely oblivious to the feelings of others and she did try.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this is the setting. I feel like I have stepped back to my childhood for a while, particularly with this one as the beginning was set in Orange, which is kind of near where I grew up… well, five hours away, but it’s closer than 99.9 percent of the books I read!

I also enjoyed being able to read a bit of Australian slang… although a couple of the descriptions which involved way too many comparisons to farming I could have done without.

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* Finished Saturday, April 6

** You later learn that Kate didn’t think she would get pregnant from the encounter because Nick was so young (he was seventeen at the time). Leaving aside the fact that it was possibly illegal (as Kate was over eighteen), I find it hard to believe that anyone these days would believe that age is an impediment to getting pregnant. Particularly someone from the country.