Conway, Jill Kerr. The Road From Coorain. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
First and foremost for the record: Jill Kerr Conway was the very first woman president of Smith College. Just had to get that out there since we’re in the area and I thought that was a pretty interesting fact.
According to several different travel websites, April is the start of the best season to visit Australia. Taking that as my cue I decided Road From Coorain would be my very first April book.
My LibraryThing Review:
Jill Conway’s memoir is about her unusual childhood in Australia. Raised until she was 11 on a sheep farm in Coorain, Australia, Conway grows up without other children for companionship. All she knows are her family, (her only playmates being her older brothers), the hard work associated with raising sheep, and the cruelty of mother nature when she doesn’t bring the rains. She doesn’t have social graces, competitive edges or the typical angsts associated with coming-of age girls. Things like sports, fashion and friendships are lost on her when she finally reaches the big city of Sydney. I can certainly relate to all of it coming from an island life that lacked much of the same things.
One of my favorite parts of the book was when Jill goes back to Coorain to help with shearing season. She’s teetering on the edge of adulthood so she sees everything with a different eye and intellect. Comparing her life as it was she notices her mother’s gardens are all dead and gone. The house doesn’t have the luster of cleanliness. It’s decidedly more rundown than she remembered. She allows that the farm is no place for a young person. I see this moment as pivotal in Conway’s life. It helps her reach for loftier goals and makes her examine her own future.
My only disappointment? I wished Conway included pictures. I know, I know. Not all memoirs need mementos like photographs, but she described her personal landscape in such a way that I wanted more. Her house, her sheep, her family. I realize Conway painted adequate pictures of all of it, but it would have been nice to have more.
Favorite quotes:
“Had she known how to tell directions she would have walked her way to human voices” (p 25).
“Being Australian, we exchanged no deep confidences” (p 142).
“I was angry at myself for being so upset by receiving the treatment I ought to have expected anyway” (p 194).
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Girls Growing Up” (p 101).
~*LunaSea*~ 