Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany

I read it in ten minute snatches on the train or before sleeping, and I suspect this is not the best way to appreciate this lyrical novel. Can this be true? Why don't I know about it? I'm in awe of Tiffany's ability to transfuse her novel with so many interesting (and somewhat obscure) facts while maintaining such a streamlined plot. An amazing revelation (to me) about the Vienna Boys Choir who were stranded in Australia at the outbreak of WWII. 'Plurry hell' - I had all but forgotten this - then had to rush to the internet to find out what it meant.

She uses phrases and sayings I haven't heard for so long, and then there is an instant recognition of something I heard my Grandfather say a long time ago. She draws you in, making you feel as if you are trundling along on the train with Jean, Robert, Mary, Mr Ohno, the cows and chickens, and then suddenly hits with something unexpected. Almost more than any other author I've read recently, Carrie Tiffany has a way of getting right at the nub of an issue with her beautiful writing. Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living is a passionate and heartbreaking novel from an astonishing new writer. In luminous prose, Tiffany writes about the challenges of farming, the character of small towns, the stark and terrifying beauty of the Australian landscape, and the fragile relationships among man, science, and nature.

In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee farmland with the ambition of transforming the land through science. Amid the swaying cars full of cows, pigs, and wheat, a strange and swift seduction occurs between Robert and Jean. Ohno, the Japanese chicken specialist, to Robert Pettergree, a scientist with an unusual taste for soil. The train is staffed by irresistibly eccentric agricultural and domestic experts, from Sister Crock, the prim head of 'women's subjects,' to Mr. Carrie Tiffany captures the frailty and beauty of the human condition and vividly evokes the hope and disappointment of an era.īillowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing advice to the people living on the land.

In this sensual, witty, and startlingly original first novel, Jean Finnegan searches for her place in a tumultuous world wracked by the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II.

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany