Books about Perth, and does my head look big in this?

[sqbr]

I just read "Does my head look big in this" by Randa Abdel-Fattah, a cheery YA novel about a Australian-Palestinian-Muslim girl who's just decided to wear the hijab, and her general hijinks and life. I enjoyed it overall, my main problem was that it was, well, a YA book about Life Love and Self-Identity, and I'm not a big fan of that genre (especially as a not-that-young adult) but I can't blame the book for that. It got a bit anvilicious, issues-driven and preachy here and there ("Be yourself!" "There are many ways to be muslim!" etc) but that goes with the genre. It reminded me a bit of "Looking for Alibrandi", but was more cheery.

Anyway, it was set in Melbourne which (like melberon's recent posts) made me feel like going back to Melbourne and eating lots of gelato and pasta etc, but also made me think back to my youth and the fact that I don't remember ever reading any YA books set in Perth that I could identify with. In general, I can't think of any books (or fiction in general) set in Perth which are about normal urban life (especially from a female pov), they're all about The Sea and The Bush and The Past and Being A Man. It feels like authors think there's no point telling urban stories about anywhere east of Melbourne :/

So can you guys think of any? And, second and harder question, any you'd recommend?
I'm almost certainly missing something obvious. And no, short stories Do Not Count (well, unless you really HAVE to mention it :))


Anyway, back to the book, as was somewhat transparently the intent I did learn a bit about life for muslim australians. The only muslim australian I've ever really spoken to was Natalie Kettleson (name probably misremembered!) back in highschool, and she made an effort not to mention it very much (I only found out when she asked if there was any alcohol in a black forest cake we had for german class)
I semi-befriended my lebanese-muslim neighbour back in Maylands, but she was in a constant state of culture shock that went well beyond religious differences (she was a very recent immigrant, and was much better settled in by the time they left)
So, yeah, it was interesting. Overall I found her very easy to relate to, especially when I remembered back to when I was christian, though I had trouble getting my head around the "no boyfriends/kissing before marriage" thing (I have trouble enough with the "no sex before marriage" thing, I find the whole idea rather alien as someone whose parents got married when I was six) until I thought "Well, Jane Austen would have felt the same way" :) It got me thinking about my own boundaries and choices: I have no specific religious/moral imperative not to go around in skimpy clothing or be promiscuous, and yet (by local standards) I do neither, and on the whole don't wear makeup or flirt or touch people. So I definitely understand how setting up those sorts of boundaries can actually be very freeing, and how you can still be accepting of other people making different choices. Hmm.

oyceter has a nice review here, and it was her rec relating to 50books_poc that got me to read it in the first place.

Comments

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

no boyfriends before marriage

Arranged marriages?

[alias_sqbr]

Oh no (I don't think even my lebanese neighbour did that) The book didn't go into it since at 16 she was too young to be thinking about it, but afaict you meet some random guy and fall in love etc, it's just that it goes from friend-with-subtle-flirting straight to fiance, like in a Jane Austen novel.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see.

I've never read or watched any Jane Austen!

[alias_sqbr]

I've never read or watched any Jane Austen!

Then clearly you are not really a girl!!

You've encountered some fiction set in like 1700-1900 right, though? *tries to remember if you studied history, fails at memory*

I must admit, I don't know how similar the sets of attitudes really are anyway, but that's the closest thing I could lay my brain on to relate to.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I don't think I've read any. There are insufficient explosions!

[sanguinity]

Hornblower. Aubrey-Maturin. There are explosions, but also some incidental courting. (Not much mind you, because the women being courted were on land and the men mostly on ships, but it's the same sort of no-kissing courting.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

I watched an episode for ten minutes and there were no explosions.

[sanguinity]

Couldn't tell you a damn thing about any of the movies.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Naval battles bore me, anyway. PotC3 was such a disappointment! I had been expecting a 5-way on fire swordfight, and all I got were some dumb ships moving around.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, POTC then, with Will and Elizabeth. That's an accurate depiction of regency life if ever there was one :)

Set in Perth

[fe2h2o.livejournal.com]

Cloud Street (Tim Winton?) and Rhubarb (Craig somebody? I've blocked it from my memory... it was that 'one book' book for the festival last year or the year before... Fremantle, rather than Perth... but _really_ didn't enjoy it... went nowhere. The one positive element was occasionally recognising places.)

I'm sure there are some others I've read... just can't recall them off the top of my head.

Re: Set in Perth

[alias_sqbr]

I own a copy of Cloud Street, but have yet to succeed in reading it :)

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

The Shark Net is set in Perth, featuring the 1960s serial killer.

[alias_sqbr]

Sounds exciting :)

[seaya.livejournal.com]

You should write one. Or illustrate someone's. Seriously!

[alias_sqbr]

I do actually have a half formed idea for a comic about a middle aged female supernatural detective based in Perth, though I don't know that I'll ever write it :) (I'd have to finish ACOS first, and at my current rate that won't be till some time next decade...)

EDIT: Wait, now I remember! In 2005ish actually started a near future scifi comic set in the eastern suburbs about a telepathic mind controlling cult, but got bored of the idea after drawing the second and third pages. See, that's the Darling Ranges in the background! (They're the closest thing we have to mountains in this state)

Wow, nothing like looking at old drawings to make me happy with my current skill level :D

[trs80.ucc.asn.au (from livejournal.com)]

Not Perth, but Gillian Rubenstien's novels are clearly set in Adelaide, albeit slightly genericised - one time I was in Adelaide and realised the HJ's was the hamburger joint in Skymaze. I like most of her books, but would recommend the Space Demons trilogy. Oh, The Shark Net is set in Perth, it's had a few adaptations as well but I haven't read it or seen any. Strange Objects by Gary Crew is set around a fictional town on the Zuytdorp cliffs which I also liked, although never quite worked out what happened in the end. Stark by Ben Elton, which I read a few years ago, is set in Perth (or possibly Mandurah) but I found it unreadable when I picked it up again recently.

This post is currently #2 on Google for [Novels set in Perth], first being http://www.bclbooks.com.au/perthbooks.htm which has pages for other states as well. Further down the results are Manic Streets of Perth which you can preview on Google Book Search, and Belly dancing for beginners by Liz Byrski. Then Choices by Dianne Wolfer published by Fremantle Press who have a fair few YA and adult books, although it's hard to tell from their website how many are set in Perth - I know Blue is only by the pullquote … a brilliantly written book … This is a wonderful book and a true literary experience of Perth. and City of Light is a given away by its title. Other WA publishers - Fontaine Press which doesn't have much Perth stuff, while UWA Press and Hesperian Press are mostly about The Sea and The Bush and The Past and Being A Man.

[trs80.ucc.asn.au (from livejournal.com)]

And yeah, half of Tim Winton's pile of crap^W^W^Wœuvre is set in Perth.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was about to ask, how the hell did you miss the endless piles of Wintons wank that we got constantly in high school.

Oh I how I remember that. :(

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

We did awesome stuff like Terminator 2 in high school.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

You didn't do any books at all? o.0

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we did. Maybe it was just the lit class that did Cloud Street.

[trs80.ucc.asn.au (from livejournal.com)]

I did English instead of Lit, meaning no Winton wank, instead we did Halloween (which is technically still R rated).

[loic.livejournal.com]

I did lit (poorly) but we did no winton.

[alias_sqbr]

Huh. Googling. I should have thought of that, thanks :D

I've found Ben Elton unreadable in general.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I read a few based on Perth (which you know, strangely enough I couldn't relate to at all, to the shock of some teachers). I wish I was just bitching about Tim Winton in that statement too.

From memory one was called LA Postcards, which I can't actually find online, and I can't remember the authors name, and I can only vaguely remember it. So you know I could be making this entire thing up. It was about a boy though. Or maybe it told the point of view of a girl as well, she definitely had a part in the story.

Mind you, I can't remember reading all that many books about normal rural life (especially for a townie in the south west) either that particularly grabbed me. I can remember a few desert/wheatbelt type ones that I enjoyed though.

I think though, Tim Winton kinda has the market on those kinda books in WA, which is a shame, because it kinda means nothing good gets written. There's also the fact that the majority of the population do live in the East side of Australia, and as such there's larger groups of urban artist/hippy kinda areas in those cities, and its always easier to write about what you're surrounded by. :P

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, I know, demographics are not on my side, doesn't mean a girl can't dream :)

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

Stylistically, there isn't really any point in setting an urban novel in Perth. Melbourne at least is conventional, and if you don't want to do Melbourne, you can shift into either Sydney or London. But Austrlian literary theory, and hence Australian literature (written by people educated by Australian theory backgrounds) are deeply informed by both The Bush and The Sea, because they take rhetorical forms that can't be replicated/bettered by shifting the scene to other places, which is what you can do for urban landscapes.

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

Oh, I should probably add the disclaimer that it's also useful to have the setting in Perth if you want to talk about Aboriginality. Yeah

[alias_sqbr]

Stylistically, there isn't really any point in setting an urban novel in Perth.

Bah to style and theory, I want novels set here because I live here :) And, subtle as the difference may be, an urban story set here is not the same as one set on the east coast.

Good point about Aboriginality, though.

[melberon.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head: the Tim Winton books are the obvious ones - I really enjoyed Cloudstreet but looks like not many others commenting here did, or at least aren't game to admit it. It's more about the Perth that my dad grew up in rather than the one that I did, I suppose. There's also Merry-Go-Round In The Sea which is set mostly in Geraldton and a little bit in Perth...

There's also a more recent science-fictiony young adult novel called The Fur (I think) set in a post-apocalyptic Perth where the western suburbs are sealed off and quarantined from the rest of the state. Wikipedia linky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fur_(novel)) to prove I'm not making this up, it seems more obscure than I'd thought.

[alias_sqbr]

We did "The Merry Go Round in the Sea" for Lit, I thought it was ok but remember the bit set in Perth being very short (and the main character found it all a bit alien) I won Cloudstret as a prize for highschool and have never managed to get more than a page or so in :)

I think Sean and Tess Williams have some post apocalyptic sf set in WA, too.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

Sally Morgan's story in My Place is about her growing up in Perth. While the original book is actually about her, her mother and her grandmother's stories, they're seperated into 3 seperate, YA - sized books as well. Sally Morgan's story is called Sally's story in the YA edition.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, cool, see I always meant to read that back when I was a teenager but never got around to it, and then forgot. *reserves at library*

[pooxs.livejournal.com]

anything by kate macaffery (sp?) is usually set in perth or WA somewhere.. of course it also tends to be angst filled YA stuff, but it's very good for 14-16yos

[alias_sqbr]

Ok, thanks, I hadn't heard of her. English teachers ftw :)