This is a small collection of short stories, fictional, about life in the Australian country. It's a combination of stories about families, individuals, farms and small towns. Some of them are funny, some of them heartbreaking, and all of them pitch perfect little exponents of their place and their community. As the blurb puts it "showcases the beauty of lives lived outside city walls." Because there is much to recommend life away from the cities, where resilience and personal fortitude come with the territory and the battle for survival is trickier due to the lack of hand holding and delivered to your doorstep resources. None of which matter when you compare it to the wide skies, and the natural world and the sheer humour and gritty determination that's reflected in this collection.
Picked it up in part because Margaret Hickey is now high on my will read come hell or drought list, and because, as a smallish volume it felt like a great little distraction from a heap of reading I "should" be doing. Worked on all levels, this is clever writing from someone who knows the world, the people, and the up and downs.
Rural Dreams
Margaret Hickey’s Rural Dreams takes a look at life outside the big smoke, featuring the kind of characters you might expect in the country – as well as some you might not.
A football coach ponders obsession . . . a mouse plague dictates school yard politics . . . a failed playwright asks ‘who gets the farm?’ . . . and a young woman returns to her fire-ravaged town.
People we know. People we grew up with. Some of them might even be us . . .
Funny, heartbreaking and true, Rural Dreams highlights the richness of life on the land and showcases the beauty of lives lived outside city walls.
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