The Fine Colour of Rust

by P.A. O'Reilly

Set in the Australian bush, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things that matter.USA cover

Loretta Boskovic never dreamed she would end up a single mother with two kids in a dusty Australian country town. She never imagined she’d have to campaign to save the local primary school. She certainly had no idea her best friend would turn out to be the crusty old junk man. All in all, she’s starting to wonder if she took a wrong turn somewhere. If only she could drop the kids at the orphanage and start over . . . But now, thanks to her protest letters, the education minister is coming to Gunapan, and she has to convince him to change his mind about the school closure. And as if facing down the government isn’t enough, it soon becomes clear that the school isn’t the only local spot in trouble. In the drought-stricken bushland on the outskirts of town, a luxury resort development is about to siphon off a newly discovered springwater supply. No one seems to know anything, no one seems to care.

With a dream lover on a Harley unlikely to appear to save the day, Loretta needs to stir the citizens of Gunapan to action. She may be short of money, influence, and a fully functioning car, but she has good friends. Together they can organize chocolate drives, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the local slaughterhouse—whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Contemporary, Audiobook, Book Club, Chick Lit, Literary Fiction

247 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2012

Reviews

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out · Rating 5 out of 5]

Left behind in Gunapan by her lousy husband with her two children, Loretta Boskovic drives the dusty road from her house to town, staring out at the scrubby bushland dreaming of rescue by a handsome lover and a car radio that gets something other than racing commentary. In this unique, wryly observed novel, Paddy O'Reilly captures the essence of a lonely Australian bush town and it's ordinary residents with humour and heart.
The author's protagonist is a woman you will find in any small town, she is a single mother juggling child raising with work, a budget that only allows for discounted undies and a longing for an intimate relationship. Loretta copes with the spareness of her life with a wicked sense of humour, and roll-up-your-sleeves and get-on-with-it attitude. Her children are everything to her, even though she regularly fantasises about being whisked away from their whining demands. Raising her two children on her own isn't easy, they miss their father and his sudden (though mercifully brief) reappearance seems to trigger their worst instincts leaving Loretta floundering.
Loretta isn't completely alone, her neighbour, Norm - a laconic and slightly eccentric collector - is her dearest friend and champion. Her best friend is also a single woman on the prowl and in a community like Gunupan everyone knows everyone else.
In an unconscious effort to stave off her loneliness, Loretta rallies the community in an effort to stop the closure of their school and when that is accomplished, finds a new cause involving a shady development deal and corruption Councillors. In a small town like Gunapan the community is the lifeblood of the town and depends on its' residents to fight for it to stay alive.
It is rare to find Australian novels with a vivid sense of place but O'Reilly evokes this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, slowly dying as services and amenities disappear. Public swimming pools are drained and sports fields are unplayable thanks to the extended drought and the youth grow up and leave for greener pastures. These towns rarely get much attention in fiction with the dazzling Sydney Harbour or wild, romantic outback providing more popular and scenic backdrops.

Loretta's every day life in an ordinary town makes for a surprisingly compelling story. The Fine Colour of Rust is a character driven novel that also addresses a variety of themes such as social injustice and inequality within a subtly layered plot. It will make you laugh and cry and is a fine example of contemporary Australian fiction that captures the essence of who we are, and who we want to be.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loretta Boskovic was a single mother, having been deserted by her husband Tony, with promises of money and contact with the kids, Melissa and Jake…so far none of THAT had happened! Loretta lived in Gunapan, a very small country town in Victoria, Australia. It had the usual small town problems, with drought and a lack of water being only a part of it: there was only one school, one small supermarket and several other struggling businesses. The nearest large town was a couple of hours away.

Norm Stevens Senior was a father figure to Loretta…he always looked out for her, he owned the towns junkyard, with every possible spare part anyone could ever want, and had a heart of gold. But he also had a very short fuse if anyone threatened someone he cared about. It also turned out he wasn’t EVERYONE’S best friend…

Loretta had a big heart, and was full of passion. She was determined to save the local primary school where Melissa and Jake both attended…the local government wanted to close the school, and have the children bussed to the next town. Loretta was angry, and so decided to stir the whole town into action. Save Our School was formed, and the meetings were lively…as long as there were biscuits to be had!

But it also seemed there was a problem with the local council…was it tainted by corruption? There were some strange events happening, and they didn’t make sense to either Loretta or Norm…

I absolutely loved the endearing qualities of the characters in this novel, especially Loretta and Norm. The Fine Colour of Rust is funny, full of dreams and irony, is warm-hearted and oh, so Australian! Highly recommended.

[Helene Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

The genre? I'll call it contemporary fiction with humour - truckloads of it.

When we first meet Loretta Boscovic she's daydreaming about dumping her kids in an orphanage and riding off into the sunset with her dream lover - on a Harley no less. A single mum, she lives with her two children in dusty town called Gunapan.

I was captivated from the opening pages. With sparse words, P.A. O'Reilly skilfully crafts a strong image of a struggling town and its inhabitants. The goats, Loretta's car, her constant battle for what's right make for an eclectic lead character, but the lesser players aren't abandoned either. Norm reminds me of my father and his cronies. The regulars at the town meetings feel like people I've met before. Loretta's children, Melissa and Jake, both have a depth and a charm that makes me care about them.

I read the The Fine Colour of Rust while I was travelling from Cairns to Taree and back again. Many times I laughed out loud - particularly at the dialogue - causing my fellow travellers to shift in their seats with looks that clearly said 'mad woman alert.' I stopped reading several times because I knew I was close to tears. Being considered a little nutty is fine, but I know a weeping woman makes others uncomfortable and I didn't want to have to explain myself. It was too complicated for that!

The characters are stereotypical and yet they are unique. They are so much more than cliches. I cared about them, I laughed with them and I cried with them. They lingered in my mind long after I finished the story and I've been forcing the book onto friends and relatives ever since.

It's Loretta's ability to be wryly amused by everything, including herself and several disasters, that takes the story from depressing to uplifting. I gather The Fine Colour of Rust started life as a short story. I'm very glad Paddy O'Reilly decided to explore a little more or I would have missed out on meeting Loretta and the good folk of Gunapan.The Fine Colour of Rust

[Maree Kimberley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's always a good feeling when a book you've been looking forward to reading meets your expectations. Everything about The Fine Colour of Rust worked for me: the familiar country town landscape, the eccentric characters, the small town political intrigue and the ups and downs of family relationships (particularly the all too typical self-absorbed deadbeat dad who is keen to leave his former family behind). There are some scenes that are absolute gems: the minister's tour of the butcher's abattoir to see the champion meat slicer and dicer at work was hilarious. However, the author is equally adept at writing tougher emotional scenes without descending into mawkishness.

O'Reilly's writing is authentic and honest, with good pacing and lots of love for her characters (even the dickhead ones). The main character, single mum of two Loretta, is one I absolutely empathised with and her dry, self-effacing humour drives the narrative. It's a very Australian novel and yet the universal themes of friendship, community and fighting against the odds for the "little guy" will resonate with readers from all over. Highly recommended.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loretta Boskovic is a different woman from the one her useless husband and the father of her two children walked out on several years ago. She's no longer the same chain-smoking, easily-intimidated frump that he would remember if he ever came back to the small rural town of Gunapan in Victoria - well, the frumpy part is still pretty much true, but Loretta is fine with that. She's got a job, though money's still tight; she's active in the community and leads the Save Our School (SOS) committee, rounding up the unenthusiastic members to attend meetings, writing to the education minister and anyone else she can think of, to keep the local school from closing. And in the privacy of her own head she daydreams about the wonderful men who turn up in flashy cars to seduce her and take her away from all of it.

Her two children, Melissa (Liss) and Jake, are good kids, though they're hurting from the absence of their father, Tony, especially Melissa who doted on him. After ten years of marriage, Tony disappeared one day, leaving Loretta a postcard that read "I'll be in touch. Cheque coming soon." No cheque ever came, of course, or any other correspondence, and Loretta is ever hopeful that he never reappears in her life again. Of course, he does, and with a surprise: a young, friendly girlfriend on his arm and more useless promises coming from his mouth. The new girlfriend doesn't even realise he's still married, not divorced, and tensions in Loretta's house rise as he completely ignores his two children.

While there's plenty of drama going on in Loretta's life, she has the energy to wonder about a clearing in the bush outside town, where no clearing had been before. It's all very secretive and hush-hush, what's happening, but she finally learns that the council is working with a developer to build a resort for rich city people - and has sold the land and the rights to the natural spring beneath it. Water that the town could sorely use. As Loretta digs deeper and tries to find out what's really going on, matters with her children and her deep friendship with her neighbour, an old junkyard man, Norm, take a serious turn.

This is my new favourite book of the year. I'm on a roll! The fact that almost every Australian book I've been reading has totally won me over partly because of how homesick I am does not in any way diminish the treasure that is The Fine Colour of Rust. It's just such a perfect book, this is going to be a completely, dementedly gushy review, and I'm going to make it so you just have to get your own copy to read it for yourself, just so you can come back with your own opinion (and, possibly, to shut me up). And quickly, I have to thank Marg (The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader), who posted a longish quote from the book a while back which absolutely tickled me pink and led me to immediately order a copy - thank you Marg!!

The story touches on several themes, including bullying and classism, social inequality and racism, and the government's attitude and policies towards the Aborigines (it's there in small but ever-present moments, as it is in real life), but you can read it in several ways: as a fun, almost chick-lit novel about a woman left to her own resources who more than comes into her own; a dry, humorous examination of small-town politics and oddball characters that reminds you of TV shows like Seachange and Hamish Macbeth (yes, it really has been that long since I a) watched TV in Australia and b) watched TV, full stop); or as a really warm, astute story about a mother's relationship with her children and of love between unlikely friends in a harsh but beautiful setting. I very happily read it as all three, and as such got a lot of enjoyment out of it in so many ways. The humour is deftly balanced with a darker, grittier side; the light-weight local politics that borders on cheesy (local politics always has that quality to it) is balanced by the very real struggle faced by rural areas to maintain their funding for public services and schools. Nothing is heavy-handed or too belaboured: O'Reilly has achieved that lovely blend of subtlety, humour, whimsy, astute character development and a story that gently draws you but holds you there with the grip of a wiry rural woman with strong arms.

It's a simple enough story, but those can make the best novels. Loretta is a great narrator, flippant, irrelevant, yet very caring and committed and pretty smart. We never really learn all that much about her before the present day, except that she comes from Melbourne and moved to Gunapan with Tony many years ago when he was offered work there (if I'm remembering correctly); there aren't too many details about her earlier life but you get snippets and subtle hints that paint a kind of artistic impression of a life that's become irrelevant to present-day Loretta. She made some mistakes but she has her children, whom she loves dearly, she's come to love Gunapan and be accepted by the "natives" (locals), and she's made her home here. Her sisters, Patsy and Tammy (her mother had a thing for country music and named her daughters accordingly), live very different lives in the city, but Loretta has no intention of moving back to Sydney. She's tenacious, has a sound moral and ethical compass, and watching the way Tony's presence immediately alters and affects her makes you want to punch him and wrap your arms around her to protect her - not that she really needs it.

Loretta's friend Norm quickly became one of my favourite characters. An older man, very much "rough around the edges", he is like a grandfather to Liss and Jake and a good friend to Loretta. He brings around bags of lemons from his tree, a goat to mow their wild backyard, provides good conversation and is someone Loretta turns to when she needs a surrogate parent-figure. Norm is separated from his wife, Marg, who couldn't tolerate his junk-collecting ways - or, indeed, his junkyard, from which he makes no money but to which everyone gravitates to gossip with him (Loretta figures he could make a bomb if gossip were a commodity). He has a son, Justin, who as a teenager pulled a stupid prank with some other boys, took the fall and has spent fourteen years in prison for it; he's just been released and it's shaken Norm's life up a bit.

Loretta has problems enough of her own, but she takes others under her wing - not in the way of some people where their kindnesses are "well-meaning" and suffered out of politeness. She doesn't come across as interfering or overbearing, just caring and offering support. Her relationship with her kids rang true, and I could really feel for her, having to bear Liss's anger and blame for driving her father away (so she thinks), and her reaction to the truth of what's going on between her kids and the immigrant children from Bosnia-Herzegovinia at school. Every detail felt honest and realistic, yet the story contained enough doses of farce and downright silliness to not only keep it from sliding into maudlin drama, but to also make it feel even more realistic.

The humour was just right. The episode where the minister of education visits and is entertained in true local style with a demonstration of a record cattle-carcass butchering (and is subsequently spattered with gore and stunned into a zombie-like silence) was hugely entertaining. But the humour is present in smaller, more subtle ways too, little details or in how characters interact with each other. It had such a warm, cozy vibe going, I wanted to crawl right into the story and take up residence in Gunapan myself.

Speaking of the location, while Gunapan isn't a real town it certainly represents plenty of small, out-of-the-way towns in rural Australia. They're everywhere, really. And I could picture the location quite easily, as I spent a month in Sheparton one year, January it was, absolutely brutal humidity (the temperature was 38 degrees most days, but unlike in Canada they don't measure the humidity, which must have been at least 10 degrees hotter). We travelled around to many of the smaller towns in the area, and stopped in Ballarat and Bendigo on the way through - classic, famous Aussie towns. It's all in O'Reilly' details: the eucalyptus leaves, the diminished waterhole where everyone goes swimming, the red dust, the heat and flies, right down to the way people walk and talk.

I thought I had marked some pages to share quotes with you, but it turns out I didn't. That's what happens when I get so wrapped up in a story, I completely forget my own name and that I'm even reading a book. I lived inside this story, and my only complaint is how quickly it ended! I'm not even going to whinge about the use of present tense, because O'Reilly is one author who actually knows how to write it (yay!) so it read smoothly, fluidly, naturally. But I do want to share something with you, so I've chosen this particular scene from a creative writing class Loretta audits, which I loved though it's by no means the most classic or funniest scene in the book:

Next it's my turn to read aloud. "I don't think I've done it right. Maybe someone else should read theirs."
"Now, Loretta," Ruth says, shaking her head. "In this class, we don't judge each other. We're learning together."
I shrug my shoulders and pick up my piece of paper. I take a deep breath. Reading out my work makes me feel like I'm in primary school.
"OK," I say and I look around at the four nodding faces of the teacher and my classmates. "OK, I wrote a few things. The List of Pleasing Things. Wednesday night comedy on the TV. A Kmart undies sale. The smell of the Scouts' sausage sizzle outside the supermarket on a Saturday. Reading my daughter's diary and not finding anything horrible about me. The jingle of spurs."
Ruth wipes her forehead with her hand. It's warm in here, all right, but not that hot.
"That's lovely, Loretta," she says. "Now, who's next?"
Everyone who hasn't read yet shoots their hand in the air. I remember this moment from school. It's when someone gives a dumb answer to the teacher's question and the others all realize immediately that they can do better. My career as a writer is over in thirty minutes. The other class members read out their lists and not one of them has anything as ordinary as Kmart in it. Roses, moonlight, the smell of mangoes, the swish of silk against your skin. Is this why my life turned out the way it did? Perhaps I should work on developing refined taste and lofty thoughts. [p.91]

Now, I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the UK edition, and nothing in the text appears to have been changed or edited to suit a non-Australian audience. I can't vouch for that in the American edition, however (published by Washington Square Press - you can tell it by the spelling of "colour" in the title); I would be very say indeed to find out that they had changed anything at all, as this book is full of Australianism, from spelling to colloquialisms and slang, and if you started changing them there wouldn't be anything left! So as much as I'm thrilled that such a quintessentially Australian novel has been published in North America, I'm leery of just how "authentic" it still is. If only more such books were published overseas, we wouldn't have to keep on explaining what a "ute" or a "sausage sizzle" was to American readers! (and for the record, we bloody well invented the ute so I think we get to name it, right? Right!)

[ALPHAreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loretta Boskovic dreams of lantern-jawed man with rough stubble, spurs on his boots and a purring Harley-Davidson. In reality Loretta wears creaking $2 bras and underwear on its last elastane legs, she has an overgrown lawn, clunking car and two kids to raise on her lonesome after her no-good husband bolted three years ago. And the cherry on top of Loretta’s life is Gunapan – the rusted old town situated somewhere in the forgotten Australian bush; so far out of mind that the local council want to shut the school down, and a hush-hush land development is brewing under everyone’s noses.

But Loretta also has Norm, the kindly old junk man who is quite possibly the best friend she has ever had. There’s also a new mechanic in town, Merv Bull, who probably won’t stay single for long but Loretta can admire from afar until then. Then there’s Terror and Panic – lawnmowers in the form of goats. And the urge to chuck Jake and Melissa into an orphanage and skedaddle to Melbourne is coming less and less.

Maybe the Japanese are on to something with that word ‘sabi’ – “which connotes the simple beauty of worn and imperfect and impermanent things.” Maybe Loretta’s life isn’t so bad, it’s just a little bit ‘sabi.’

‘The Fine Colour of Rust’ is the stand-alone novel from Australian author, P.A. (Paddy) O’Reilly.

There’s been a trend in Australian publishing of late, a trend called ‘chook lit’. In recent years the otherwise struggling Aussie publishing scene has experienced a boom in rural romances, which glamorize and romanticize the Australian outback and country life. Kylie Northover wrote an article for 'The Age' back in April: “The novels tend to follow the narrative conventions of romance novels - attraction, a conflict, a drawn-out courtship - but they also feature feisty female protagonists who love the land and poetic portrayals of farming or outback life.” Now, the cringe-worthy ‘chook lit’ tag aside, I have actually enjoyed a few of these novels and my grandma can’t get enough of them. But the very notion of a ‘romanticized’ outback suggests a rose-tint being added to rust, which is why I so enjoyed Paddy O’Reilly’s ‘The Fine Colour of Rust’ as a sort of antithesis to the ‘chook lit’ trend.

I, and I’m sure many people, know Paddy O’Reilly primarily as a short story writer. She won ‘The Age’ short story competition in 2002 for ‘Snapshots of Strangers’, and her 2007 short story collection ‘The End of the World’ received much critical acclaim. I was really eager to read ‘The Fine Colour of Rust’, but I was in now way prepared for how much I’d love O’Reilly’s novel.

First and foremost, I want people to know that this book is funny. No – it’s hysterical. If this had been ‘chook lit’, then Loretta’s wish of a hunk on a Harley riding off with her into the sunset probably would have been the focus of the story. And Loretta probably would have been described as fabulously slender (even after two children) with hair that never frizzes in the outback heat. But it’s like O’Reilly is kicking red dirt in the faces of all those ‘chook lit’ books that so glamorize the rural outback town and life. She’s telling it like it is, stripping the ‘ideal’ of its varnish and, while not necessarily writing a horror story of ‘Wolf Creek’ proportions, she is most certainly de-glamorizing and adding a wallop of reality. I just loved and laughed at O’Reilly’s examinations of country life in this book – when it gets so hot the birds open their mouths and die of heatstroke, the local pool is shut down over summer to install a fancy café (don’t worry, it’ll be open in time for winter) and the male prospects are dismal. Even mention of a new bachelor in town has Loretta despairing, before she even meets him, because she knows the type of men who populate rural outback towns;

“What’s his name?” I ask Norm.
“Merv Bull.”
I shake my head. Only in Gunapan. Merv Bull sounds like an old farmer with black teeth and hay in his hair who scoops yellow gobs from his ear and stares at them for minutes on end like they’ll forecast the weather. The image keeps replaying in my mind as I finish wrapping the lemon tarts in waxed paper.
“You can’t judge people by their names, Loretta, or you’d be able to carry a tune.”

The town of Gunapan has a real ring of truth to it, and even if you’ve lived (or live) in a similarly sleepy rural hamlet or you’ve just driven through one on your way to some place better, any Australian reading this will be able to picture Gunapan clearly in their minds. And with O’Reilly’s masterful prose and scene-setting, you’ll be able to taste the wind-kicked dirt in the back of your throat, feel the sun scorching your skin and hear the groan of a tin roof simmering in the heat.

I loved Loretta. She used to live in Melbourne before her lousy husband, Tony, dragged them to Gunapan. So she takes a more astute observation of the town and its residents; she knows how ridiculous and country-bumpkin they can seem, but she’s never cruel about their backwards ways (partly because she has succumbed to them).

I bet she never wears knickers with stretched elastic that slither down and end up in a smiley under each bum cheek.

I honestly, hand-to-heart, snorted my way through this novel. But funny as it is, ‘The Fine Colour of Rust’ also has real heart. Loretta is fighting a David & Goliath battle against city council that want to first shut their only school down, and then start a questionable land development – all of which Loretta is disputing, with minimal help from the local community. She’s also struggling to raise her two children, both of whom are hopelessly clinging to the thought that their dad will one day return. She does it all with a weary countenance but steely spine (no matter how much she claims otherwise);

It’s been three years since Tony left us. Three years in real time, and more like thirty years in looking-after-children time. I’m sure mothering years go even faster than dog years. I can feel my back turning into a question mark. Sometimes I catch myself hunched over the steering wheel or sagging in a kitchen chair, and I can imagine myself after a few more mothering years, drooling into my porridge in the retirement home. Come on, luvvie, they’ll say to me, sit up straight now, after all, you’re only forty.

Oh, gosh – I loved this book. I loved the ‘sabi’ concept of ‘The Fine Colour of Rust’ that translated so beautifully and funnily to Loretta’s outback struggles (which kicked ‘chook lit’ out the door). I loved the cast of country characters who wormed their way into Loretta’s heart, and mine. And I loved the town of Gunapan – rusted, rural and run-down as it seemed. This is a favourite book of 2012.

[Courtney Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh I LOVED this book and want to recommend it to everyone....

My only concern is that if my none Aussie friends read this book they will suddenly see Im not so original just truly Australian to the core.

The characters are believable and lovable even in the honesty of their flaws....

The throw away lines are absolute classics.....it was an honest laugh out aloud read (and not a LOL) for me....

[James Tierney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't do as much justice to this book as the gorgeous Charlotte Wood, who summed it up beautifully in 140 characters on twitter thus:
"The Fine Colour of Rust updates rural archetypes with a bitingly accurate wit & sharp eye, yet never loses its tender heart. Fabulous book."
Yes.

[Martin Ramsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

P.A.Reilly (Paddy to her friends) was a fellow student of Nao Fukushima learning Japanese. And this novel begins with a definition of the Japanese word sabi which she writes, "connotes the simple beauty of worn and imperfect and iimpermanent things'". In the novel, Loretta lives in the small country town of Gunapan and drives an old holden. Her best friend Norm runs a scrap metal yard. As she leaves his place one day "the fine colour of rust shmmers in the thin sunshine. It has a strange beauty I will always associate with Norm." (144)

Loretta is a one person activist trying to save the local primary school. This is a great comic novel in the tradition of Laurie Clancy and Louis Nowra. Open any page and there is something going wrong. Things take a different twist in the life of the single-mother when Loretta's two children are accused of bullying some refugee children at the local school. Needless to say this is devestating news for Loretta.

After Norm's death there is a fund raising auction in the town. An aerial photograph of his scrap metal yard which has been labelled an eyesore by local council shows, "the outline of a car, a Christmas tree, the town fountain, an aeroplane, a head with a Roman nose, a star, a tree, a cat, and, lastly, the three letters SOS. " The town is saved from a law breaking councillor in cahoots with a developer from W.A. and proceeds from the auction are used for the benefit of the locals. This is a great victory for Loretta who Norm dubbed, ' the Gunna Panther'.
And the principle of sabi is vindicated by "The art of junk." (247)

[Nancy McKibben · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fine Color of Rust
By P. A. O’Reilly

This book has many of the ingredients of chick lit, especially its feisty, independent heroine whose feckless husband abandoned her and her two children three years before the story opens. But it transcends its genre and becomes simply a good read.

First, the setting, which is a small, battered town in the Australian outback. The author does an admirable job of transporting the reader to Australia. Who knew that it sometimes gets so hot there that the birds sit on the fence with their beaks open - and then some of them fall off and die? A fascinating detail, and it certainly conveys a sense of the heat and the dust of the outback.

Our heroine Loretta loves her dusty town and is fighting to save it. She has her hands full; first, to convince the Ministry of Education not to close the elementary school, and second, to track down the instigators of a mysterious real estate development in the nearby bush land that threatens the town’s already stingy water supply.

Life is not so easy for this single mother.

When I get to the school gate, the kids are both standing with their hands on their hips. I wonder if they got that from me; old scrag standing with her hands on her hips, pursing her thin lips, squinting into the sun. You could make a statue of that. It would look like half the women in this town. Dust and a few plastic bags swirling around its feet, the taillights of the husband’s car receding into the distance. They should cast it in bronze and put it in the foyer of Social Security.

Idly, Loretta dreams of of rescue.

As I steer the great car down the highway toward home I have a little dream. I’ll pull into the driveway and sitting next to the veranda will be a shiny maroon Harley-Davidson. I won’t dare to look, but out of the corner of my eye I’ll see a boot resting on the step, maybe with spurs on it. Then I’ll slowly lift my head, and he’ll be staring at me the way George Clooney stared into J.Lo’s eyes in Out of Sight and I’ll take a deep breath and say to him, “Can you hang on for five minutes while I drop the kids at the orphanage?

But she actually loves her kids and knows that she has to rescue herself. Warm-hearted, feisty, stubborn and funny, Loretta and her friends will reward the reader who decides to spend a few hours with them.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is going to have to be a rather skimpy review: The Fine Colour of Rust by P.A. (Paddy) O’Reilly is so popular that the library would only let me have it for a short time and so I had to scamper through it without taking my usual copious notes.

It’s easy to see why it’s so popular: it’s funny, it’s heart-warming and it’s quintessentially Australian. It’s the story of single-mum Loretta Boskovic who introduces herself like this:

‘Well, I’d better pick up the kids,’ I say. I don’t want to pick up the kids. I want to send them to an orphanage and buy myself a nice dress and learn to live the way I used to, before I turned into the old scrag I am now.’

Like Laura in the ABC TV series Bed of Roses Loretta has no money and a clapped-out car, and there’s likewise a Mr Fixit man in her life, but there the resemblances end. Norm owns the junk yard and while his dry humour and empathy make him a likeable character, a love interest he’s not. He’s too old and grubby. Loretta’s not very well-behaved children Jake and Melissa are still at primary school and very much underfoot, and she doesn’t live in an attractive growth-corridor town with prospects, she lives in a declining country town called Gunapan. She has an unglamorous part-time job that gets her down, and in her spare time is trying to rustle up participation in the campaign to save the local school from closure. This is rural realism with a comic twist and a tender heart.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/12/05/th...

[Susan (aka Just My Op) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 out of 5 stars. I loved everything about this book, beginning with its intriguing title. So many of us can relate to Loretta, who desperately loves her children but has wonderful fantasies about the man, various versions of him, whom she is going to meet after she drops the kids off at the orphanage.

Caught up in her small Aussie town's (well, mostly her) attempt to save the local school, she petitions, makes signs, organizes, and becomes someone to generally avoid, even in a town where people cannot easily be avoided. Her sense of humor is delightful. Although Loretta doesn't have it easy, this is not a dark book. At fewer than 300 pages in paperback, it is a quick read and perfect for that feel-good kind of novel in which I love to escape.

Thank you to Atria for providing me with a copy of this book.

[Kristin Poley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had no point. There was no moment where I was like "oh, that is what this book is about!". It was just this lady, a single mom with two kids, constantly complaining about her life and her friends. There was this campaign to save the school that had promise as an actual storyline but it never went anywhere. At the end, O'Reilly tried to bring all of these elements together like they belonged there and it really just highlighted that the plot wasn't written out well. The reviews said "delightful" and "unforgettable" but I was disappointed.

[Diane Schneider · Rating 1 out of 5]

I generally give books about 100 pages before giving up - this one was 113. I had read good reviews, but this was just dragging. Loretta is a single mom(still married, but her husband ran off) of 2 kids. The setting is a rural area in Australia. Loretta is fighting to save the local school that is. Set to be shut down. The story might be going somewhere, but it seems amused by it's own characters and wit. I was not.

[Vivian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel started as a bit of fun but the central character became more unlikeable as it went on. She was actually s a bully - a trait she identified in others but could not see in herself. In the end I couldn’t care what happened to her.

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok for an easy read but the characters were shallow & stereotyped & the jokes cliche

[Jane Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the Australian bush, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things that matter.USA cover

Loretta Boskovic never dreamed she would end up a single mother with two kids in a dusty Australian country town. She never imagined she’d have to campaign to save the local primary school. She certainly had no idea her best friend would turn out to be the crusty old junk man. All in all, she’s starting to wonder if she took a wrong turn somewhere. If only she could drop the kids at the orphanage and start over . . . But now, thanks to her protest letters, the education minister is coming to Gunapan, and she has to convince him to change his mind about the school closure. And as if facing down the government isn’t enough, it soon becomes clear that the school isn’t the only local spot in trouble. In the drought-stricken bushland on the outskirts of town, a luxury resort development is about to siphon off a newly discovered springwater supply. No one seems to know anything, no one seems to care.

With a dream lover on a Harley unlikely to appear to save the day, Loretta needs to stir the citizens of Gunapan to action. She may be short of money, influence, and a fully functioning car, but she has good friends. Together they can organize chocolate drives, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the local slaughterhouse—whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home.

[Sharon Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this book and am very surprised it has a relatively low 'read' count here on Goodreads. It has been on my to-read list for a few years now and as I am currently going through an audiobook phase and found it in the local library's BorrowBox it was as good a time as any to "read" it and I would describe it as a little hidden treasure. Author P.A. O'Reilly brings us the story of Loretta, a woman raising her two children alone after husband "the bastard" has done a runner, seemingly like a lot of men in hometown Gunapan tend to do. In the meantime she just gets on with things, including fighting to save the local school and wondering exactly what is going on with a piece of land that seems to have been earmarked for a resort, a strange thing to have in their town, whilst dreaming of the day her knight in shining armour rides into town to save her from the reality of life, preferably on a Harley. Close friend and father figure Norm, and best friend Helen are always there for a cuppa and chat. I frequently laughed out loud. Thoroughly enjoyed - five stars from me.

Narrator Christine Milte is perfect voicing main character Loretta.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me laugh out loud. It’s funny but not in a vacuous cliched way. It’s also endearing and touching. The narrator is Loretta, a sassy single mother and champion of the good cause, fighting corrupt local Government and trying to save her kid’s school from closure. Loretta is trying to make ends meet after her hopeless ex-husband ditches town and dodges parental responsibility. I loved the characters, every small town knows someone straight out of this book. I’m still cheering for Loretta.

[Star Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I much anticipated reading this book after reading the Wonders by Paddy O'Reilly. It took me a while to track it down but Im glad I did. I enjoyed the writing family/relational issues especially. The plot involving saving the school and the proposed resort in the small town could have used a bit of polishing. You can tell this is an earlier writing as opposed to the Wonders which is one of the my favorite books. However the humor and compassion was inexplicably charming.

[Juliet Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing like no reception for a week to make you slam through books! I’ve had this one on my shelf for a while, bought from the port fairy secondhander. Your typical aussie dirt rural town story; typical stuff my mum would read when she yearns for rural life.

A decent, calm read! Nothing crazy really happens, but the descriptors of the bush and small country towns are so nostalgic. Pretty humorous at points The romance went exactly the way I wanted. I need a country mechanic boyfriend ❤️

[Bev May · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this as an audio book. The narrator was excellent and the story was well told.

[Kylie Wagstaff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just really enjoyed this book, good yarn. Cup holders are the first thing I look at in a new car too!

[Lindie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't usually read girly books so this one was not a happy experience for me. if you want something like to read I guess you can read this but I wouldn't waste my time

[Dominique · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's unexpected and slow paced but it's just what you need

[Elise Hinkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a truly lovely story. Thoroughly enjoyed its humour.

[Ellie Syverud · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story - warm, endearing, laugh out loud funny. so relatable! will look for other books by this author.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Australian, cute and funny! A cup of tea and biscuits anyone?

[Glenda Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fun book full of characters that made you smile. Witty. Would recommend

[Brenda Rosser]

v. fine, small depressed dry country town, possibly a bit too real