The Road from Coorain

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite memoir of a singular childhood
Review: Jill Ker Conway writes with a voice of inevitable achievement that drives this short memoir along. She describes her childhood in the Australian bush, a childhood filled with both accomplishment and tragedy. There is an undercurrent of joy here, perhaps of contentment. I particularly enjoyed the parts about the nonviolent dismantling of colonialism, the sexism of the fifties, and her relationship with her family as she grew from a child to an adult. The only flaw I found was that she covered racism and to a lesser extent sexism with a voice of current polite culture, and not the more consistent voice of her childhood and youth used throughout the book. In other words, the disapproving academic put her fingers in the pie. Still, this is a memoir of the highest quality, which matches West with the Night in my opinion, and which might eventually take a place with the very finest I've read, such as Wind, Sand, and Stars.

Rating:
Summary: Coming of age in the Australian outback
Review: Jill Ker Conway started life on a remote sheep station in Australia, and eventually became a women's historian and the president of Smith College. This is the first volume of her memoirs, covering her childhood and adolescence. It is both a fascinating portrait of life on a sheep station and an inspiring coming-of-age story. Beautifully written.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating look at the childhood of an independent woman
Review: Jill Kerr Conway went from an isolated Australian sheep farm in the bush to become the first president of Smith College. Her insatiable curiosity, her obvious intelligence, and her ability to transition from one culture to another with remarkable ease all account for her rise in academe.
The best part of this book, IMO, is the first two thirds; after that, it gets a little pedantic, almost as if she knew she'd finished with the good stuff and was just hustling along to get it all down and be finished with it.