Book thirty-four: One Whole and Perfect Day

One Whole and Perfect Day* (2006)
Judith Clarke

Rating: 3.25/5

Yes, yes, I wasn’t supposed to buy anymore books until I’ve read the ones I have (Ha! Like that will ever happen). But really, who can turn down 20 percent off, plus a further 15 percent on top of that? Somebody stronger than me, that’s who.

I’m glad I bought this though (let’s just pretend I bough one book for now**), it was funny and very sweet. And Australian.

A whole and perfect day isn’t something that Lily’s had a lot of her. Her father ran back to America before she was born, her mother keeps bringing home patients from the aged care centre where she works, her grandmother has an imaginary friend, and her grandfather recently threatened her brother – who is a bit loony himself – with an axe before disowning him.

So, when her grandmother decides to throw her grandfather an eighth birthday party – and invite the whole family – it doesn’t seem like its going to go well either. But all of a sudden, Lily wants it too. She wants her whole and perfect day.

The story passes through all these points of view and a few more characters. It’s kind of like watching a movie. You get all these snippets from all these people’s lives.

Thankfully, most people are referred to in terms of Lily, the 16 year old “main” character so it’s not too confusing. I wouldn’t exactly call her the main character though – others have the same, if not more, “screen time,” but she is at the centre of the web of connections of all these people.

This book has some incredibly sad moments – like when her grandfather wakes up in the middle of the night and suddenly realises he can’t remember the colour of his mother’s eyes. But it is also really sweet at the same time.

There are only two things that annoyed me about this book.

First, it was never clear where people are geographically. We know that Lily’s grandparents live in the blue mountains, and the name of the suburb where her brother lives (somewhere in Sydney). But I just found this kind of distracting that I kept trying to figure out where everyone was and how far apart they lived. I didn’t want a map – just a little more clarification. (Eventually the suburbs are named, and you kind of work it out, but I spent way too long being distracted by trying to place everyone).

The other thing is the use of coincidence and dreams foreshadowing things that happen later. There are way too many to be believable. But I still kind of want to believe, so I guess it works.

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* Finished 25/4

** Am I the only one who can’t just buy one book? It’s like I think they’ll get lonely if I don’t buy more than one. I’ve found three is best.

Although in this case I bought four.

Did I mention the discount?

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Book twenty-six: The Taste of Innocence

A Taste of Innocence* (2007)
Stephanie Laurens

Rating: 2/5

It was okay. Readable, but nothing great.

A Taste of Innocence focuses on the relationship of Charlie. Charlie has decided – as 95.69 percent of Lauren’s hero’s do, that it is ‘time to take a wife.’ His obvious – and to him, only – choice is Sarah, his neighbour who although he does not love, he has known since childhood. Sarah – who coincidently is in love with Charlie – decides that they need to get to know each other better and if they both agree will marry at the end of their four week courtship.

This is a Cynster novel, by way of Charlie being Alathea’s from A Secret Love, younger brother. In that novel, Alathea and Rupert (known as Gabriel) through a series of events wind up together – they have known each other since childhood. She’s always had a bit of thing for her. He’s always had a bit of thing for her. But they deny it. To themselves and others.

That pretty much describes the plot here also.

This is the problem with this book. I can pick up the plot points from the Lauren’s books I’ve read. And I haven’t really read that many.

Maybe I’ve just read the wrong ones? Because their relationship in the later half of the book is very similar to the one in Scandal’s Bride. They even both have a fire.

I think my main problem is that the original books were much better than this patchworked one. It was still readable, but it just wasn’t that great.

It also had the very Kinley MacGregor like plot of “he loves me, he just doesn’t realise it! I will go on being nice and spineless no matter what he does because one day he will realise it…sure, he won’t really make it up to me, but who cares, he loves me!”

I think I spent the whole send half of the book waiting for her to stand up to him. But no matter how much he hurts her feelings, she doesn’t really do anything about it. I don’t think turning him down twice and a yelling at him for two minutes count.

Once I realised she wasn’t going to stand up to him, I was just bored.

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* Finished Sunday, April 8

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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.

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Book twenty-three: Serendipity

Serendipity* (2007)
Melanie La’Brooy

Rating: 3.5/5

I sort-of liked her first book, liked her second, and really liked this. I guess this means I might sort-of love her next, and we can work our way up from there?

This book was filled with witty dialogue and lovable characters. The only thing that stopped it from being better was the sterotypicalness (not a word, but try and stay with me) of the two main male characters.

On the one hand you had Oscar: charming, whimsical, funny, loving, and seemingly carefree. The other, Pelham: snobbish, stuffy, annoying, censoring, and boring.

Obviously, the main point of the plot was for the main character, Hero, to choose between the two.

Ummm… this would have worked much better if the choice was harder. I don’t like when the author makes it easy for themselves by making the character’s choice so obvious. It’s annoying.

There were some back stories that explained why the characters made the decisions they did, and there was some attempts by La’Brooy to show that Pelham wasn’t that bad, it was just his relationship with Hero that bought out these bad characteristic. But I think that giving a character only bad characteristics through the eyes of the person who is supposedly in love, makes it seem highly unrealistic that they would stay with them.

Okay, sure, people stay with people they don’t love all the time in real life, I just think that when the plot of a book is about choosing between two people, you have to make that choice a little harder or the effort of reading about it seems wasted.

I know it is unlikely (and probably would have been dissatisfying) if La’Brooy had gone against the stereotype and had Hero make the unobvious choice at the end, but I would have liked it to have been a little harder for her to chose.

Also, Oscar seemed a bit too naive to live at times in the first half of the book, but he does toughen up towards the end.

Overall, the book is saved by the dialogue. It had me laughing out loud more than once, and come on, any book with a singing telegram dressed as a gorilla, has to be good, right?

This book is also very pretty on the inside. It has a really nice type setting or whatever that is called. It is very easy to read - espcially after the dark, smugy, teeny tiny print of some of the books I have read lately. Although the type of book that leaves ink on your fingers is usually half the price of a pretty one like this, so I guess its to be expected.

On a completely unrelated note, I am very annoyed that going back to work has reduced my book consumption from an average of two a day, to two a week. If only I didn’t need my pay to buy the books, I would do away with the job and concentrate on the reading.

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* Finished on Tuesday, 3rd April.

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Book Ten: Black Juice

Black Juice* (2004)
Margo Lanagan

Rating: 3.75/5

I started reading this on the plane** on the way home to get my wisdom teeth out. Mistake. There should be a warning on the first story: this may make you cry in public. It would be a community service.

Anyway, I usually don’t like short stories; I get too attached to the characters and feel ripped off that I don’t get to learn more about them. But somehow the stories in this collection avoid this by creating snapshots of different worlds that would actually be less perfect if they were longer.

I got to wondering while reading this book how much an author (or their editor, I guess) thinks about sequencing. Is a collection of stories, kind of like the idea of a concept album? Or is it like a really good mixed tape, where each song flows into the next?

I guess if this were a concept album, I would have to say that the common theme amongst all the stories was that they were all disturbing in their own way.

Although I liked some stories in the collection more than others – my favourites were the first two Singing My Sister Down and My Lord’s Man – I think they are all fascinating due to the way Lanagan manages to create whole worlds within a fifteen page story. It’s amazing. Some authors can’t manage that in a 100k book.

I would be very interested to read her other collections – White Time and Red Spikes – as well as her full length novels – The Best Thing and Touching the Earth Lightly – I have a feeling they will also be fascinating. She just has a wonderful writing style.

And that’s all I can think about to write. For some reason although I had my wisdom teeth removed my shoulders, neck and back are all bruised and achy too. They should be more gentle.

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* I actually finished reading this on the 17/3.

** I somehow managed to miss my flight. Typical that this would be the only time I have ever actually had a specific time I needed to be home by.

I rang for a taxi forty-five minutes before check-in closed, figuring I could make the twenty minute journey to the airport with plenty of time to spare and hopefully avoid sitting around the airport for hours waiting. (My flight home at Christmas was delayed by four hours, so I was a bit over the whole Sitting Around the Airport thing).

Ha! I should have been so lucky as to wait there for hours.

Usually when I call a taxi, by the time I lug my suitcase down four flights of stairs, it is either waiting there for me, or pulls up thirty seconds later.

After standing on the street waiting for fifteen minutes, I started to get worried. I now only had half an hour to get to the airport before they closed check-in.

I was worried if I wondered off in search of an alternative taxi, it would arrive as soon as I left. So, instead I tried to call the company to check on the booking. Eventually, after getting an engaged signal, then being on hold for ages, I got through.

Apparently they had called my home phone, and as no one had answered, they hadn’t responded to the job.

Umm, gee, thanks.

That has never happened before. I felt like kicking myself, or preferably someone from the taxi company. I just couldn’t help thinking that if I’d called from my stupid mobile none of this would have happened.

Anyway, the guy promised to send another one. Right away.

Yeah. I waited for a little while longer. I now only had twenty minutes before check in closed. Great.

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “maybe I should walk up to the main road and see if I can flag down a taxi that way. Don’t want to be late.”

Ha! Again!

Every person in Sydney seemed to have a taxi but me. And I was still worried that maybe my taxi I had booked would turn up. By this stage I was more than a little stressed. And that’s putting it mildly. Actually, I had been pretty dammed stressed all week. It was just one of those times where you want to stomp your foot and complain loudly that this was the absolutely last thing in the world you needed.

Actually, I think I might have done that. Twice.

At the same time check-in on my flight closed, I was standing in front of my building, on the phone with my poor mother trying not to cry. I will not reveal whether or not I was successful.

Just for fun, I tried calling the taxi company again. Just as I go through to an operator, a taxi pulled into my street. With its light on. About freaking time. I hailed it down, told the woman on the phone not to worry.

My poor mum called back to ask what was going on. The taxi driver overheard me tell her I’d finally gotten in a taxi, even though I’m not sure if it’s the one I booked and that I’ll probably miss my flight. He asked me what company I booked with and was all confused when I say his. Apparently no bookings have come up in my area in the last half hour.

Which means that the operator who told me so kindly that he’d send someone right away is a liar and a fraud. The taxi driver was all like, “don’t worry, you’ll make the 4.05.” I ended up wanting to smack him in the back of the head despite his niceness. Mostly because my flight was leaving at 3.55, and I was sure I’d already missed it.

Turned out I was right.

I arrived at the check-in counter. Attempted to calmly present my ID and mumble my destination.

“You must be on flight later tonight?” the assistant asked, confused. It did not help matters any that the assistant reminded me of my old boss. Things just kept on getting better.

“No, the 3.55,” I mumbled again, taking back my drivers licence, and holding it tight enough for the sharp edges to cut into my fingers, as though that would make any difference.

“You can’t be,” she replied, looking over the list of passengers or whatever it is they have on those pieces of paper that look like they were printed by the old IBM Compatible computer we used to have. “We had 34 booked and 34 checked in.” Now she gives me an almost accusing look, as if I’m trying to insinuate myself onto a flight I don’t have a ticket for. “Do you have your booking confirmation?”

You mean that piece of paper I used to print out religiously, but gave up on because no one had ever asked me for it? Was this like the fact that it was compulsory to answer that taxi’s Call on Arrival, even if you lived in an apartment building, and even though you’d never had to before?

“No,” I said instead. I really didn’t feel like arguing over when my flight was supposed to leave.

More paper shuffling. More nervous clutching of my driver’s licence by me. “Oh,” she said, relieved. “I see what’s happened. There was somebody on standby and because you didn’t turn up, they were given your seat.”

Gee, that’s a relief. I know I feel better now. “Oh,” I repeat back to her instead. “I waited fifty minutes for a taxi to show up.” I don’t know why I felt the need to explain, but I didn’t like the implication that I am some kind of hopeless person who can’t be bothered to show up for a flight on time. Even though, obviously, I am.

“Oh, bugger. I’ll just see if there are any seats left on the flight tonight.” Lots of typing. She gives me a sympathetic look. “Oh, I have some bad news. Unfortunately we don’t have any seats left. I can put you on standby, or perhaps you’d prefer a flight tomorrow morning?”

Couldn’t she just have coughed and said Computer Says No?

At this stage, I give up any pretence that I wasn’t trying not to cry and do the foot stamping thing again. Instead, like the three year old I am, I mumble, “I’m going to go call my mum.”

“Ok,” she says after I apologise again. “Just come back to me when you decide what you want to do.”

I call my mum, who being a mum has a solution. So I go back over the counter, wait while she finishes with the next person, and ask if there are any seats on the 4.30 flight to the next town over.

After a call to reservations in which I am told that my Internet purchased ticket has been forfeited by my failure to check in, I have to purchase another ticket from scratch, but thankfully get a seat on the flight.

The assistant suggests that I should try and get the taxi company to pay for the new ticket seeing as they didn’t show up. I can’t really see that happened as I couldn’t even get them to come take me to the airport.

Before I walk away, she adds “oh, I should warn you the plane is rather small. Only one row of seats on each side.” Okay. Fun.

To add insult to injury, the plane is held up waiting for someone (I presume an already checked in passenger, aren’t they special) to get on the bus. When they do arrive they are clutching a McFlurry. I hope they were embarrassed.

Turns out the flight was the funniest I have ever been on. There was no air hostess, and the First Officer asked us on the bus if we needed a taxi when we got there, then distributed the snacks before take off. The highlight of the flight was definitely when the poor guy had to do the safety demonstration. He was about six foot two, and could barely even stand up straight.

Anyway, all in all the most stressful airport getting-to experience ever. The thing that pissed me off most about the whole thing are the hours I have wasted in the past waiting for the airline to be ready to take off. One memorable hour because they couldn’t find the air hostess. How the hell do you lose a person? It’s not like their a hammer or something. Not that you should have hammers near planes.

Whatever.

At least I got here. And in the future I will worry less about thinking I’ve forgotten to pack something and more about whether or not my taxi’s going to show.

I will also remember that whole taxi change over thing.

Damn stupid if you ask me.

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