Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living: A Novel

By Carrie Tiffany

Book Overview

The "Better-Farming Train" slides through the wheat fields and small towns of 1930s Australia, bringing advice to farmers. Amid the swaying cars full of cows, pigs, and crops, a strange and swift... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743286383
• ISBN13: 9780743286381
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

About life and Nature and how we can ruin both

This is a wonderful book. Beautifully written, with an interesting plot and complex characters. I was moved by the story of Jean and Robert's, at times, difficult life and fascinated by the subtle parallel story of how science and progress have their limits. It's always easier to follow rules (be they scientific, religious, cultural...) - living life is more complex than any rules can predict, as Jean and Robert find out. It was refreshing to read a book that's not melodramatic, not overwritten, not drowning in adjectives or unncessary details, and that doesn't need to hammer in every metaphor or symbol.

Brilliant Debut novel

One would think a story revolving around soil and agriculture and high ideas about better farming methods would be incredibly dull. One wonders also how this book could gather such widespread acclaim. I was more than pleasantly surprised however, when I ventured into an Australia that I have never known amid wheat, phosphates, cattle and mice plagues and read about love, despair, friendship and the inability of man to control the harsh landscape he loves. Narrated by a seamstress Jean we meet the characters of `The Better Farming Train'. The Government has put together a group of experts on everything from cattle to looking after babies in a propaganda exercise to encourage people in small towns to work harder to produce better crops, cattle and healthy members of the population. We may have grown as a nation on the sheep's back but the train had experts on almost everything relevant to farm life including a charming Japanese chicken sexer. Jean soon leaves the train behind though after she falls for the quiet, unassuming and idealistic scientist, Robert whose expertise lies in soil. His religion is science and he honestly preaches the use of super phosphates to improve crop yield so significantly that not using it would be tantamount to sin. He buys a farm and uses his scientific rules to enhance his crops and convinces other farmers in the Mallee area to do the same. With no farming experience we see the scientist fight against the elements he has never dealt with or considered; a fight which he can only lose. Jean's commentary is heartbreaking as she talks about her dedication to her husband; a desperate effort to gain his love through pleasing him by helping with his experiments as well as patiently putting up with wheat husks covering the kitchen table. The relationship is as important to the story as the fight between science and nature. As Robert desperately fights against drought and mice plagues, Jean fights against his and her emotional isolation from each other. They both watch in dismay and shame as year by year the wheat yield becomes less and less and so the relationship, based purely on a physical bond deteriorates as well. Tiffany brings alive the heat, dirt and isolation that is the Australian bush. It may be the 1930's but the characters fight against what still faces our farmers; drought, plagues and isolation. Throw in the depression and war and it is hard to see how anyone survived in this unforgiving environment. You do not have to appreciate science or be interested in agriculture to enjoy this book. Tiffany weaves a fabulous tale based on one person's desire to belong. Tiffany deserves her many nominations, including being short listed for The Miles Franklin Award, for this, her debut novel. I am looking forward to more from this brilliant agricultural journalist become novelist.

Stunning analysis of contemporary follies

Carrie Tiffany has written a stunning account of the folly of man's attempt to conquer nature. Well-deserving of its shortlisting for the Orange Prize and the Australian Miles Franklin Award, it is inspired by an actual 'better farming train' that travelled around Victoria in southeastern Australia during the early Depression years teaching farmers how to turn fallow soil green simply by adding phosphates; how to breed good cattle, sheep, goats, even how to make babies fat and happy by giving bottle-feeding them. Told from the point of view of the woman who falls in love with Robert on the train, the story is sensual, sometimes comic, and ultimately tragic. The book has a beautiful symmetry. A major new talent on the international literary scene