Imani ♥ ☮'s Reviews > The Road from Coorain

This was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. I'm not sure that anyone reads such a book by choice, but perhaps there is someone out there. I, did not. This was required. However, as far as required reading goes, this was not entirely bad.

The story of Jill Conway, was an interesting and unique one. Jill guides the reader through the landscape of her beloved Coorain, a sheep farm in rural (and I mean RURAL) Australia. She speaks on her role as the only daughter in the Ker family among two older brothers and her parents. This includes assisting her father with the sheep while her brothers were away at school. Jill's journey through childhood was what interested me most, especially that of her time in Coorain before her father's tragic death. After that point, Jill and her mother depart the land -which suffered from extreme drought for years- for the metropolis of Sydney. There, Jill received various educations before finally getting accepted into The University of Sydney. While I found her subtle, almost passive aggressive remarks about feminism and Australian sovereignty to be interesting, the novel took that all too familiar route most memoirs I've read seem to take: the ennui of growing up. Still, I admired Jill's grace with life and her steadfast determination to herself and her mother, even when the latter seemed to be giving up hope.

I would have wished that Jill would have focused a bit more on her interpersonal relationships, especially those outside her family. Her companions were always mentioned very briefly, and many times it was as if they should have hardly been mentioned at all for all the relevance they had. All in all, an interesting coming of age memoir for anyone; but most particularly those interested in post-war world II, Australia or feminism (of the passive kind).