Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea hosted at Boondock Ramblings.
This month the starting point in Dominic Amerena’s novel about authors and publishing,I Want Everything. I must confess I found this book a bit difficult to find links from, which isn't normal for me. I tried a couple of different option but couldn't make them work through to the end. This was my third attempt.
I love reading books set in places that I know. For example, I Want Everything is set in Melbourne and so I am choosing the last book I read set in Melbourne which is The Butterfly Women by Madeleine Cleary (my review). This book tells the story of women living in goldrush Melbourne and working in a fancy brothel.
Another book with a goldrush connection which I read years ago was Mr Chen's Emporium by Deborah O'Brien. (my review)
There aren't that many books with the word emporium in the title. I have read a number of books by Jojo Moyes but haven't yet read The Peacock Emporium, despite having owned it for years.
I have read and loved The Peacock Summer by Hannah Richell
It feels as though I end up with bird related books pretty regularly so was looking through my list of books read for one that I haven't used before too many times which lead me to Liar Bird by Lisa Walker
And sticking to the bird theme I am finishing the chain with Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce, which is a book I currently have out of the library.
Using that library link I could now go in multiple directions but that's it for this month!
Cassandra Daley has never given much thought to wildlife until she loses a PR war with a potoroo.
Sacked and disgraced, she flees the city. Not for a tree-change, just a bolt hole. But small-town Beechville has other plans for her.
Feral pigs, a philosopher frog and a town with a secret, could things get worse? Add one man with the sexiest way with maps she's ever seen and they soon do. Her best friend Jessica thinks she's been brainwashed by an RM Williams cult, and Jessica could be right.
Can Cassandra reinvent herself, or will she always be a liar bird?
Cassandra Daley (always called Cassandra - never Cassie or Cass) is living the dream. Dream car, dream house, dream boyfriend (even if he is a bit dim), dream job. As one of the top PR girls in Sydney she regularly appears in the society pages. She works hard, and plays hard. Really hard. Not bad for a girl who has evolved from gothic teen with a penchant for French philosophy who comes from the less than glamorous western suburbs of Sydney.
That is until a newspaper journalist exposes some shonky dealings that she has undertaken in the course of working for a new development which jeopardises the habitat of critically endangered potoroo. As an aside, in case you are wondering what a potoroo is, it is a small rabbit sized mammal which is almost like a cross between a rat and a kangaroo.
When the resulting uproar doesn't really die down, it is clear that Cassandra needs to get out of Sydney.... fast! She sees a job in a newspaper for a PR person in a small country town near the New South Wales/Queensland border called Beechville. Sure, it isn't Sydney, but really, it just has to last as long as it takes for people to forget all about the scandal and then she will be able to make a triumphant return back to her previous fabulous life.
The new job doesn't particularly start very well. As part of the deal she is given a small cottage to stay in, although hovel is probably a better description. The paint is peeling as is the lino on the floor, and a few others things - not least of which is the fact that there is a frog in the loo!
Even in the office, she isn't exactly being made to feel welcome. The office is only small, which makes it even more obvious that the ranger, Mac, is not best pleased to have her as part of the team, although the boss, Sam, seems really pleased with the work that Cassandra is doing even when not everything goes to plan.
What follows is a series of misadventures as Cassandra begins to learn that maybe her dream life wasn't all that fabulous, that living in a small town could be more exciting than she thought, and that she doesn't necessarily like the idea of sharing her dream boyfriend with someone else.
Given that every year one of my goals is to read more Australian authors, I was pleased to see that there are now some Australian publishers who are making their books accessible via Netgalley. I was scrolling through one day and saw this book and knew that this was an Australian author and so requested it straight away. I have to say I was not disappointed by the book!
Not too long ago I mentioned that I have a tendency to like British chick lit novels more than American ones, but I didn't really talk too much about Australian chick lit, mainly because I can't really remember reading many. The start of this novel, in particular, has a bit of that kind of chick lit feel, but the reader's journey doesn't necessarily go exactly where you thought you might be going.
A lot of the humour in the book is mostly derived from the city slicker's interactions with the local wildlife (feral pigs, snakes, frogs, cane toads, a thought to be extinct animal), but there are also plenty of fun musical references mainly from the 80s and 90s, the fact that Cassandra uses Alice in Wonderland as her guide to life and a charm that makes this an immensely readable diversion for a few hours.
That's not to say that the book isn't without it's issues - for me, Cassandra's romantic entanglements, and disentanglements if that is a word, were all a bit rushed, but this is a minor qualm really. Cassandra started out as someone I couldn't imagine actually liking if I met her, but as part of her journey she learns to take herself a little less seriously. There is also a cast of secondary characters that add to the local flavour of the book.
It is obvious that Lisa Walker has a keen interest in wildlife preservation and this shone through the pages of this book, without necessarily making it feel as though you were being hammered over the head with the environmentalism message.
The author's next book is due to be released later this year and I for one will be keeping an eye out for it. It is going to be called Killing the Bonsai.
Rating 4/5
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the egalley that I received of this book.
This book counts towards both the Aussie Author Challenge and the Australian Women Writer's Challenge.
I am currently reading Liar Bird by Lisa Walker. I am not 100% sure how I would characterise it in terms of genre, but I am leaning towards the catch-all women's fiction or even chick lit. Whatever you want to call it, there is no way you could mistake the setting for anything other than Aussie.
My Bookish Quote/Teaser Tuesday comes from the page 5 so right at the beginning of the book when we are just getting to know the main character, Cassandra. Her perfect life is just about to fall apart in a big way.
I knew I had about ten minutes, maybe twenty - plenty of time. My feet sank into the hand-woven Turkish carpet as I padded to the meditation room. Pulling out my tattered copy of The Annotated Alice, I opened it randomly, closed my eyes and pressed my find to the page. "You don't know much," said the Duchess, "and that's a fact."
I nodded - so true. Spot on, in fact.
Why Alice in Wonderland? I know it's not what most thirty-year-old PR executives read. Well, we all have our means of coping. Some people are into Oprah; others, Buddha; and some - well, me - rely on Alice. I first discovered the wisdom of Alice at the age of eight...
What follows after this quote is a whole passage about how Cassie found the book and how much she treasured it, but it was too long to type it all out!
I can't imagine using a book like Alice in Wonderland as guidance for life, can you?
Before I finish this post, I thought I would share a video about the native Australian Lyrebird that this book obviously has taken inspiration from in terms of the title at least. This bird has the amazing ability to be able to mimic all sort of noises - other bird species, construction tools, cars, humans and more!
This video was all about Chook who was the male lyrebird at the Adelaide Zoo. He died recently at the grand old age of 32.
In addition to the mimicry, they can put on a very impressive display with their tails to help protect their territory. An all round amazing Australian native animal.
There has been an appearance of one lyrebird in the book so far, along with some other rare wildlife!
