Douglas has already bored a wife into divorce with his enthusiasm for concrete. Both have endured enough heartache to make them pessimistic about their romantic prospects. Though she makes them the subject of great comedy, Grenville regards these sweet losers with incredible patience. They spot one another immediately - they're often the only things moving on Main Street - but both are determined not to increase their already high diet of embarrassment. Douglas has been sent to demolish the town's only real attraction, the dilapidated Bent Bridge. "You could not window-shop convincingly in Karakarook," Grenville writes, "unless you were in the market for dead flies." Harley has come to help the remaining 1,374 citizens build a heritage museum to attract tourists. Both arrive on the same week in Karakarook, New South Wales, a village evaporating into ghost-town status. They must get together, of course, but Grenville delays their courtship with exquisite timing. "He had been known to laugh long before the punch-line, out of sheer anxiety." Harley aims for lively but comes off sounding accusatory.
They're mystified by the intricacies of small talk, envying the pleasantries that others seem to have learned early in life. "He'd grown a mustache as a kind of diversionary tactic." Harley struggles to maintain a smile that doesn't highlight her fang-like incisors.īoth come from families of famous people who put their own shortcomings in high relief. Douglas is so self-conscious about the size of his ears that they turn red. They're both awkward, middle-aged people baffled by where to put their hands. This Australian winner of Britain's Orange Prize tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a chronically shy engineer, and Harley Savage, a museum curator who's been having a bad hair day since she was 12. Everyone who's ever returned from a great date to discover toilet paper trailing from their shoes will cling to "The Idea of Perfection" like an old friend. Kate Grenville has written a book for the rest of us. Readers who are particularly successful and good-looking, please skip to the next page.
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