About book Everyman's Rules For Scientific Living (2006)
Jean Finnegan and Robert Pettergree meet on the Better-Farming Train, a government-sponsored educational program that travels around Australia, several years before World War II: she is a seamstress; he is a soil expert. Their attraction is immediate, inexplicable, and intense, in spite of Finnegan's mutual flirtation and fascination with Mr. Ohno, a Japanese chicken sexer. Finnegan is quiet, "dark," and watchful: she listens to the conversations around her, embroidering them into a veil that isn't even a veil, just a scrap of curtain... At first I thought I would just fill in the holes. But it became something else. Forms took shape that I hadn't planned, lines and whirls darted through the netting leaving bright trails of color... It seems I have stitched the very shape of the conversation in the sitting car. The heat of it, the dips and lulls, the opinions and arguments...Pettergree, a serious and dour redhead (not an oxymoron, apparently), is fanatically invested in science and progress. He is the author of an earnest but absurd 8-point "Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living": "...2. The only true foundation is a fact... 4. Avoid mawkish consideration of history and religion..."Pettergree's commitment to "scientific living" is as devout as Finnegan's swift but fierce loyalty to him. Pity the woman who falls in love with a coldly rational man (or, even worse, the man who aspires to be one)! There is an early passage, from Finnegan's point of view, that beautifully sets the stage for their relationship:I can tell that Mary doesn't wholly approve. That she considers Robert odd--a boffin, a cold fish. He certainly hasn't used any of the standard techniques of wooing and seduction. We have barely touched at all since the honey car. When the train does throw us together, accidentally, he could steady me, but instead he reaches for the roof of the carriage and I'm left flailing, embarrassed by my outstretched arms.The two marry and go off to some remote farm in Australia, Pettergree determined, via scientific methods, to wrest success from the unforgiving landscape. Each year Jean, the "baking technician" of the outfit, faithfully rates, on a scale of 1-to-10, the crumb structure, crust color, and volume of loaves made from Robert's crops, measuring "the quality of wheats grown by Mr. R. L. Pettergree of Wycheproof in regard to high yields of good-colored flour with superior baking quality." The charts, included in the narrative, show the devastating effects of drought, mouse plague, and wind storms--Robert's attendant disappointment and Jean's flagging spirits are implied. In the end, science can account for neither the whims of nature nor the complexities of romantic attachment. Science never helps any of the characters, in fact: it only serves to justify or support ideas that seem patently cruel. I'm at a loss when it comes to articulating my feelings and thoughts about this book. My memory of it is a bit dream-like, which perhaps says a lot about the book itself: the series of haunting and vivid episodes are compelling but disjointed. There are heartbreaking scenes from two achingly lonely childhoods (Jean as a motherless girl caring for a paralyzed cat, Robert as a fatherless boy who compulsively tastes soil); a chilling episode wherein an "ordinary" cow (named "the folly cow" because "it is your own folly to keep wasting fodder on her") is publicly derided by a lecturer in favor of "superior" breeds (eugenics briefly rears its head several times in the book, and each incident chillingly foreshadows Nazi ideology); a sad scene wherein a woman finally learns the correct way to thread her sewing machine only as the machine is being sold at the auction that marks the end of her father's failed career as a farmer; a description of a farmer who fancifully and inefficiently arranges his fields so that the different types of wheat form an image of Big Ben when seen from an airplane (you can imagine Robert's reaction to this situation). I could go on and on, and I find it amazing that a 230ish-page book could contain so many oddly memorable characters and scenes.I found the first half of the book more compelling than the second. The writing is quite lovely, but I felt as though there was something getting in the way of real emotional involvement with the protagonists. In some ways the secondary characters seemed better rendered. There is something admittedly unsatisfying about this story, but it's so haunting and atmospheric and fascinating that I almost don't care. I have a feeling that I'll be wrapping my mind around this one for a long time.(It occurs to me that the book reminds me in some ways of C.E. Morgan's All the Living, which I also read this year--the focus on agriculture, a new marriage, emotional distance.)
From Publishers Weekly:“The dusty farms of 1930s Australia are the backdrop for this rich and knowing debut novel about science, love and the limits of progress. The "Better-Farming Train," commissioned by the Agricultural Department of the Province of Victoria, travels throughout the country educating agricultural communities. Behind "[f]ourteen cars of stock and science and produce" is the women's car, home to Sister Crock, stern infant welfare teacher; Mary Maloney, cooking lecturer; and Jean Cunningham, the curious, headstrong narrator and sewing instructor. Jean avoids the men in the sitting car, where everyone gathers during long train rides. About love, she says: "I am not looking for it." Nonetheless, love finds her in the form of Robert Pettergree, who has the unusual ability to identify the origin of any handful of soil by its taste. Robert's belief in scientific progress—exhibited in his eight maxims, the Rules for Scientific Living—is unshakable. Determined to prove his theories, Robert buys a farm for Jean and himself in the vast, impoverished wheat district called the Mallee. Despite drought, mice, economic depression and war, Jean and Robert struggle to fulfill the promises of science and love.”This is a slow-paced, rather sad story, and I didn’t warm to the characters very much. In spite of that, I actually liked the book a lot and read it in just over a day. It’s well written and the author successfully evokes another time and place. I felt I was in Australia, in the thirties, feeling Jean’s disappointment each time the wheat crop was poor and the test loaves didn’t turn out well. Maybe I could relate to it because I have a science background and I’m also from a major wheat-growing area of the world. I’ve often heard stories of crop failure on the Canadian prairies during the depression. The Better Farming Train, travelling to the isolated farming communities, seemed like the kind of thing the Canadian government might have undertaken, too. I loved the black and white photos which added to the realism of the story.
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Another surprise off the shelves off my local library, though this felt a little more removed from what I'd usually consider "my thing".Jean Finnegan is a seamstress working on the "Better Farming Train" - touring round Australia in the 1930s telling the farmers, and their wives, what to do. She leaves the train to marry wheat scientist Robert and set up an experimental farm.I liked the way the story just ambled about, never seeming to be very plotted, but it's got a plot in there all the same. Nice writing, not so nice happenings, well imagined people, a good read.
—Kirsty Darbyshire
This is not a romance, nor is it a story that ends happily. It's not what I'd consider a tragedy, rather, it is a reflection of real life, of farming life in a time of minimal prosperity. There are many references to towns that I know, and I appreciate the research that had to have gone into crafting this novel. Even the dust storm that swept through the mallee reminds me of images from old newspapers, and brings the taste of dust to my lips from dust storms that swept through my home town in years past.On the downside, I would have preferred to spend more time with these people -- more time in experiencing their lives, the events that shaped them, that drew them to the eventual conclusion. The logic, progression, characterisation is strong, but at times I hoped for a little more introspection. Overall, it's an enjoyable, enlightening read with unique, well formed characters.
—Caroline
I picked this out at a charity shop on a whim; normally I wouldn't have read it and maybe I should read the blurb closer before I read things in the future.This book was fairly mediocre -- it follows the journey of Jean, who works on the Better Farming Train in Australia in the 20s before attempting to live off the land after marrying. The context was what attracted me to the book however it barely featured and when it did, not for very long. It mainly focused on the couple's crops, which I could not have cared less about, and the couple themselves. This did not advertise itself as a love story. I have no interest in reading a love story.So, for the most part, this book was largely uninteresting. However, it picked up a little towards the end, hence 3 stars and not 2. I quite liked the ending; it wasn't predictable but it added up. This is the sort of book I feel needs to be handed to a good editor, who can tell Tiffany to remove half the book and lengthen the last 50-odd pages, as they were one of the only parts that was interesting.All in all, wouldn't recommend this.
—Mia Boddington
