My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
Firstly, I thought Miles Franklin was a man, just like how I thought Christos Tsiolkas was a woman. I really am terrible at guessing genders.
[finished assignment 1]
I'm not going to lie, the cover of the book really bugged me. I couldn't understand why the cover looked so oriental to me but had a Caucasian girl looking confused in what looked like an Asian top to me. But the book did get to me. It was slow to begin but when my mind opened up to it and wasn't as cynical about it anymore, I could not put it down. I needed to know what happened to Sybylla Melvyn, the protagonist and I needed to know who this mysterious Harold Beecham was. I liked how each chapter was at most, five pages which made it easy for me to track my reading progress because I hate ending my readings in between chapters or pages. I finished it off with a final reading of approx. 4 hours.
I must have missed the memo on Miles Franklin being a feminist and with that, the novel did not end conventionally as I wished. There was little resolution and again, embedded meanings within texts. Hence why it is in my Oz-Lit syllabus. That being said, despite the ending being different, I really do appreciate the skill invested into this text.
The character of Sybylla was frustrating but also captivating. Her naive and unconventional thoughts irritated me to the ends of the earth but her strong-headed personality in standing up for what she believed in proved courageous and enlightening to me. Again, I'm going to be honest in saying that I was so surprised by the significant growth of Sybylla as a character that I feel almost inspired to write a novel even though discovering this technique isn't exactly a pot of gold. Rather addictive, I feel.
Do I recommend it? Yes
Would I read it again? No
Out of Five? Three point Five
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