by Julia Lawrinson
Compared to her beautiful sister Marianne, Sandy feels invisible. Sandy has never oozed with confidence at the best of times, but since her family’s move to a small, wheat-farming town Sandy is even more unsure of herself. The year is 1966 and small-town attitudes (especially concerning the women and the Aboriginal residents) are conservative at best, intolerant and violent at worst.
While Marianne effortlessly makes friends with the girls and (despite her engagement to a boy back in Perth) draws in male admirers, Sandy can barely make it through her first day in a new school without vomiting from anxiety. Sandy is also having trouble keeping Marianne’s constant flirting a secret from the girls’ father – a strict and occasionally abusive man who does tolerate any threat to the girls’ reputations. None of these anxieties are new to Sandy. But when Sandy meets Billy, a lithe and attractive half-Aboriginal boy, she is drawn to him with a force she has never experienced before. The strength of Sandy’s attraction is so strong that she begins to use any excuse to be near Billy, risking her father’s anger and violence. But Sandy’s dreams of a relationship are obliterated when Marianne herself sets her sights on Billy, and the two sisters are swept up in a violent and tragic series of events that will shatter lives and families.
Heartbreaking but hopeful, Bye Beautiful uses its small-town setting to reflect the racial tensions and social conventions of volatile 1960s Australia. A coming-of-age story with some genuinely powerful moments, this is a keenly felt and very readable novel.
(Anna)
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Posted Tuesday 29 September, 2009. Updated Tuesday 29 September, 2009.