The Idea of Perfection

Table of Contents

 

 

Acclaim for
The Idea of Perfection
by Kate Grenville

“Two of the most unlikely characters ever to wander reluctantly into a love story find each other — and themselves — in the Australian outback in Kate Grenville’s Orange Prize-winning and daz zlingly compassionate sixth novel.... Grenville’s prose is fluid and funny, and as precisely detailed as the most beautiful quilt... a novel that shows us how love can be messy and awkward and full of oppositions, an achievement that gives this incandescent novel its strength and endurance.”

— Caroline Leavitt,
The Boston Globe

“Grenville does her characters the honor of taking their pain seriously and is gracious enough to allow them their hard-earned pleasure. Her ability to move between these elements gives her novel a beautiful balance, and her readers a lasting faith in the necessity of bridges of all kinds.”

— Sylvia Brownrigg,
The New York Times Book Review

“It may not be easy to imagine a tender, nuanced, funny novel whose atmosphere, from start to finish, is one of agonized embarrassment, but Kate Grenville has written one... to her, embarrassment is as complex as love, as varied as unhappiness. Each character afflicted with it suffers unique torments, obeying its dictates or overcoming them in a way that’s all her own.”

— Polly Shulman,
New York Newsday

“At the heart of the novel is the possibility that two characters as imperfect and seemingly at loggerheads as Harley and Douglas could form a perfect relationship. And, in exploring that possibility, Grenville has written a novel that will conform to many readers’ idea of perfection.”

— Jean Patterson,
Chicago Tribune

“The simple plot of this novel — a woman and a man have conflicting goals — functions merely as a dummy on which Grenville drapes a gorgeous and intricate study of three characters. Two are engaging and wildly imperfect... the third, Felicity Porcelline, is disturbingly inhuman in her obsession with perfection.... Whether probing her eccentric characters’ doubts and anxieties or describing the hot, desolate landscape of the bush or capturing the way its inhabitants talk and think, her sentences — deceptively casual in their diction and rhythm — peg every moment with exquisite and surprising aptness.”

— Christina Schwarz,
The Atlantic Monthly

“Grenville achieves something very near perfection in her latest work... love, she suggests in this irresistibly quirky tale, can give us the strength to transcend our greatest fears.”

— Paul Friedman,
The Dallas Morning News

“An irresistible comedy of manners that catches the agony of chronic awkwardness with great tenderness. The Bent Bridge spans a treacherous gully in the heart, but Grenville is a trustworthy engineer who understands the quirky geometry of love.”

— Ron Charles,
The Christian Science Monitor

“A great introduction to Kate Grenville’s delightfully eccentric brand of romantic fiction.”

— Michael Shelden,
The Baltimore Sun

“There’s a smile — if not an outright belly laugh — on every page of this delicious comic novel ... wonderful entertainment: a cock eyed romance that will have you cheering for all of these unlikely, wayward lovers.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Piquant and memorable... Grenville’s novel neatly fits the subtitle that Woody Allen gave to
Annie
Hall: a ‘nervous romance’ ... Grenville has a wonderful eye and ear for the oddness of small town life.” —
The Independent
(U.K.)

“An impressive novel, mined throughout with little pockets of danger and depth... Grenville manufactures an extraordinary comedy of manners.” —
The Guardian
(U.K.)

“A very fine novel... There’s nothing trite about the violent, sensuous color in Grenville’s descriptions of the Australian bush, or her compassion for her eccentric characters.”

—
The London Times

PENGUIN BOOKS

Born in Sydney, Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s best known writers. She has worked as a film editor, journalist, and creative writing teacher. Her novels include
Lilian’s
Story and
Albion’s Story,
which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize for fiction.
The Idea of Perfection
was a New York
Times
Notable Book and was selected by
The Atlantic Monthly
as one of the top 20 books of 2002.

ALSO
BY KATE GRENVILLE

FICTION

 

Bearded Ladies
Lilian’s Story
Dreamhouse
Joan Makes History
Dark Places

 

 

NON-FICTION

 

The Writing Book: A Manual
for Fiction Writers
Making Stories: How Ten Australian
Novels Were Written
(with Sue Woolfe)

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
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Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,
Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

 

First published in Australia by Picador, Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited 1999
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 2002
Published in Penguin Books 2003

Copyright © Kate Grenville, 1999

All rights reserved

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-17503-3

1. Divorced people — Fiction. 2. New South Wales — Fiction.
3. Engineets — Fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.3.G
823’.914 — dc21 2001058133

 

 

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via
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of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Even more than most, this book is a kind of collaboration. I did a great deal of research, and even though not much of it appears directly in the book now, the writing would not have been possible without it. At all stages of the research and the writing I depended on the generosity, knowledge and goodwill of many people.

For information and inspiration on the subject of quilts and other arts I’m indebted to Margot Child, Dianne Finnegan, Jim Logan, Jane Peek, Margaret Rolfe, Lindie Ward, Vara Whale, the women of the Tumbarumba Pioneer Women’s Hut, Jennifer Isaac’s book
The Gentle Arts,
and above all to Wendy Holland.

On the subject of bridges, concrete, and all matters of engineering I wouldn’t have known where to start without the enthusiasm and erudition of Chris Amet, Terry Doolan, Maggie Kortes, Geoff Skinner, Mark Stiles, Peter Wellings, and especially Elizabeth English. Any howlers are, however, all my own.

The Idea ofPerfection
would not be the book it is now without the contributions of many readers at draft stage. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nikki Christer, Suzanne Falkiner, Gabriel Fleming, Ivor Indyk, Sue Kucharova, Judith Lukin-Amundsen, Drusilla Modjeska, Julie Rigg and Lyn Tranter for their thoughtful and honest responses.

Many others showed their interest and support in various ways, great and small, and I thank you: Don Anderson, Alison Klein, Sandy Gorman, Peter Mills, Adrian Mitchell, Ross Petty, Susan Robbins, Garry Shead, John Tranter and Susan Wyndham.

Thank you, David Rawlinson, for letting us use your wonderful photo on the cover.

Joan Symington had a particular and powerful effect on this book, for which I’m deeply appreciative.

On a practical level I’d like to thank the people in the Department of English at the University of Sydney who provided me with a room in which to write. On the most practical level of all, I’d like to express my very great appreciation to the Australia Council for awarding the fellowship that supported me during the writing of this book.

My family was always supportive and warmly encouraging, even when I was full of doubts. Thank you Isobel, Ken, Sam, Joe, Anna, Julie, Tom, Alice and, most especially, Bruce.

“An arch is two weaknesses
which together make a strength.”

 

 

IN HIS EX-WIFE’S clever decorating magazines Douglas Cheeseman had seen mattress ticking being amusing. Marjorie had explained that it was amusing to use mattress ticking for curtains the same way it was amusing to use an old treadle Singer as a table for your maidenhair ferns. But he did not think the amusing aspect of mattress ticking being used as a curtain had made it as far as the Caledonian Hotel in Karakarook, NSW, pop 1374. He could feel the cold dust in the fabric as he held it back to look out the window.

Over the top of the corrugated iron roof next door, he could see nearly all of Karakarook. It looked as if it had just slid down into the bottom of the valley, either side of the river, and stayed there. Where the houses finished straggling up the sides of the hills there were bald curves of paddocks and, further up, the hilltops were dark with bush. Above that was the huge pale sky, bleached with the heat.

From the window he could see part of Parnassus Road, wide and empty as an airport runway, lying stunned under the afternoon sun. Along the strip of shops a few cars were parked diagonally into the gutters like tadpoles nosing up to a rock. A dog lay stretched out lifeless across the doorway of an empty shop. The awnings over the shops made jagged blocks of black shadow and the great radiance of the sun pressed down out of the sky.

A ute so dusty he could not tell what colour it was drove slowly in and angled itself into the gutter. Out of it got a man with a big round belly straining at a blue shirt, who disappeared under the awning of the shops opposite the Caledonian. Douglas could hear the squeak as a door was pushed open, and the thump as it closed again. GENERAL STORE EST 1905, it said on the facade above the awning, but the shiny awning said MINI-MART.