The Road from Coorain

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Summary: Life's tough ... Quit whining and get on with it
Review: The Road To Coorain was long, dusty, and uninspiring in this autobiography by Jill Ker Conway. The reader passed by the scenery of childhood with much baggage along the road. This baggage being, too skinny, too fat, too pretty, always too intelligent, female and the mother who is Jill's cross to bear.

That is the overriding theme along this endless road, as Jill Ker Conway never fit into any situation of life due to these terrible burdens of misfortune. She was miserable as a child on the drought bowl of the Australian outback with parents whom she had to parent, no education for her exceptional young nubile brain until Jr. High School in a ghetto. There was the small bit of learning she could pilfer from her brother's studies and assimilate from correspondence courses which her mother furnished for her. She seems genuinely amazed at her learning ability throughout this story and underlying all must wonder what she would have become with the same privileges that her two brothers received.

Friends did not come easily to this young lady and she claims to have never even been able to produce a conversation with anyone until she held her first job! All because she was cursed with her exceptional introspective mind filled with thoughts far beyond those of mortal men! Being born a female was surely another curse and she grew up well aware of that problem from her earliest memories. What a sad case she was and if all of these awkward situations due solely to her birth position, intelligence and sex were not enough she lost her oldest brother whom she adored in a fatal automobile accident. He was clearly her hero.

The brothers' death leads the reader into a new chapter in Ms. Conway's life and what a tedious one. Filling a good one half of the book with information of her university studies and her mother's emotional weakness. Of course Ms. Conway flourished in the University due to her superior intelligence but continued to be cursed by not having much fun and longed for a "normal" life. Even in "forcing herself" to be normal by ditching classes Ms Conway wins honors for her brilliance.

The end of the Road to Corrain moves swiftly if not abruptly within the final few pages as there is a bit of happiness for Ms. Conway. She falls in love with a young man. This is someone who loves her for her whole self but most especially her mind of course. Alas, it is too perfect a love and they break it off. Her final triumph is to leave her mother who is by now seriously mentally ill and venture to America where she can study all she wants and expand her already expanded mind with more history.

I really hated this book and felt that Ms.Conway while she may be brilliant is a seriously miserable human being with an inflated ego and can see why people avoided her like the plague all her life.

Rating:
Summary: Someone has to tell the truth
Review: She tells about life in the Australian outback with simplicity and truth. Her testimony about the disparity between women and men before ERA is essential to history. Anyone who says that she has been handed anything on a "silver platter" was not a woman trying to make it in the 1950s. Her stories from childhood are an inspiration, especially how she attempts to understand her parents, teaching us all how human it is to fall into despair and hopelessness, no matter how realistic our optimism, no matter how much integrity we think we have.

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Summary: Give me a break, Jill
Review: This book sickened me. This is quite possibly the most horrible piece of literature I've ever read. The reader of this book will become nauseated at Jill's constant tooting of her own horn, acting as if she triumphed over adversity when in reality she was handed a wonderful life. She writes as if she earned everything in her life through hard work when in fact she did not have to work at all! This is not an autobiography or a memoir as far as I am concerned, it is a short personal history of early to mid 20th century Australia as seen through the eyes of an egotistical and narrow-minded person and could easily be retitled "The Life and Times of a Spoiled Little Brat". Really, is there anything more pathetic than someone with the world handed to them on a silver platter whining about how horrible life is when they can go where they want, attend the finest schools in the world, and not have to worry in the slightest about financial security? What Jill doesn't realize is how many people would absolutely love to have the free time to whine about life because they're too busy actually having to earn a living rather than having one given to them. Avoid this book unless you're a poor soul who happens to find it on his required university reading list.

Rating:
Summary: An All Engaging Memoir
Review: From the very first page Conway pulls you into her life's journey, starting out with her lonely childhood in Australia's outback of Coorain, through the teen years in Sydney and into her young adult university years.

It is most fascinating to follow Conway's psychological evolution as a university student. An independent thinker, Conway begins to question the status quo colonial view of her countrymen who at that time regarded themselves as British. Her growing awareness of sexual and racial discrimination, expressed in such earnest tones, renders a timeless quality to this all engaging memoir

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Summary: Australia and America - are their histories similiar?
Review: Jill Ker Conway is an excellent, focused, academic writer, now President of Smith College in USA. She grew up in the orange dust of the Australia bush with no children as playmates, yet remembers a wonderful childhood with an especial concern for her mother's life. She writes this book as a successful adult, reconstructing the steps that got her through the University of Sydney's very demanding late-1950's history department. At that time, university studies were open to women, but the focus was on males, both living and dead white men. It was British colonial history that was taught, and most educated people picked up an inferiority complex about being Australian. Near the end of the book she writes about how she shook herself loose of this view, became proud and fond of the outback, and finally accepted that she was a city person. NEar the end she lands a history-teaching position at the U. of Sydney while enrolled in a Master's level program there, and it all closes tantalyzingly with a successful bid for a position at Harvard in USA. I've noticed often as a tourguide that British, Canadian and Australian women on my buses are very well-read and discuss books as a matter of fact, as something that one should know. They speak in a crisp and exact way with reasoned opinions. This writer falls in that category, well at the forefront of course. She knows herself, her own mind, and knows injustice and sexism when she experiences it herself. Her widening eyes begin to grasp that Europeans have simply grabbed the land of the aborigines. As a historian, she starts to want to know their view. To me, as an American, it is a slippery slope. There is only one logical conclusion: that all the land should be given back. Since this cannot be done, and Asians are beginning to flood into Australia as well since the 1960's, then the best strategy of the whites, if guilt they do feel over this landgrab, is to donate of their own accord time, help, money, food, clothing or training to their own poor. Academics around the world are concerned with the rights of "native peoples", but to turn back the clock is impossible. The interlopers are here. I greatly look forward to hie'ing my white yet hairy flesh over to the library and looking for the sequel to her life story and changing views. May she come to some peace about her ancestors' plopping down on the abo's!

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and beautifully written
Review: This story deeply touched me. I wish I'd read it when I was in my 20's. The descriptions of the Australian outback and its history are beautifully written. But more importantly this is the story of a young girl's development of strength, intellectual curiosity, courage and individuality. Her puzzlement and subsequent outrage at the gender discrimination she was subject to struck a nerve for me. I particularly recommend this book to college age women, but it surely would be an inspiration to anyone.

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Summary: boring....
Review: Although it was so boring that i couldn't even finish it, I can still tell it's well-written but this book just drags on.....

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Summary: A Women's Discussion Group
Review: I read Road from Coorain the year it was published. Actually, I'm certain I read it twice. I loved the sense of adventure and courage Ms. Conway displayed. I loved her use of language to bring alive the country of Australia. The book has remained close to my mind and heart over the years. I have suggested that the book club I chair read this book for February. Although the genre of our club is fiction, I assured my fellow friends and readers that this will "read" as interestingly and excitingly as a piece of fiction. I would be interested in anyone who has discussed this book in their club to share some of the topics of conversation generated. My e-mail address is [e-mail] or [e-mail]. Thank you for any suggestions you might give me.

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Summary: colonial / immigrant worldview parallels
Review: This book delivers a fascinating account of a fragile ecosystem and an equally fragile human society dependent on it. Jill Ker's coming of age is put into a societal and ecological context, which stimulates my curiosity about Australia and her other works. Her outside look at the "colonial mentality" resonates with my own immigrant's view of the cultures where I have lived, and raises interesting societal questions applicable not only to Australia. "The Road from Coorain" is a fast read despite longer descriptive passages, and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring. Inspiring. Inspiring.
Review: This and the next in the series, True North have inspired me to stay the course and follow my gut.