Night Beach by Kirsty Eagar

First published by Penguin, 2012

It was important to me, that this book be brilliant. Kirsty’s Raw Blue is still one of the best YA books I’ve ever read. Night Beach covers similar territory - teen angst, identity, the beach, very Australian. I was so ready for her lovely writing, characters and story to sweep me away.

I admire the ambition of Night Beach. I think its gothic inclinations are rather beautiful – the imaginative ideas, the way they gel with the contemporary story. But I feel as if it wasn’t a successful melding, and I can’t really say why. I don’t know, I think it’s a mix of being a little too overwrought, a little too long, maybe even not feeling Eagar’s confidence with what she was doing. It might be that I think it all got a little indulgent? Whatever it is, I found (in the second half of the book especially) that it all got a little overdone and overworked, and all the single lovely things I’d enjoyed about the first half of the book all got a little eaten up by the complexities of the second half.

There are some Raw Blue moments that I really loved. Some of Abbie’s thoughts, the way the atmosphere builds and heightens, especially in a terrific scene that simply involves Abbie in her house, trying to walk upstairs. Wow. The gothic-flavoured moments of dread are electrifying. Of course, being a lover of the sea, I enjoyed once again the idea of Abbie drawing comfort from the ocean. Sometimes even I can’t explain my emotional connection to the sea, but hey, Eagar does it for me. She really gets that unknowable, sometimes terrifying power the ocean can have, and it heightens the atmosphere in the book.

I think Night Beach could have done with an extra edit. I would have liked to see all the little sub-plots (the baby-sitting, the Hollywood thing, her Dad and the new baby) tied together, or worked into the gothic narrative a bit more. The painting sub-plot is really the only thing that is worked fully and successfully into the supernatural elements. Also, the whole mystery surrounding Kane and the boys and what happened on the island – perfectly plausible, but I think I wanted something more.

I understood where Abbie was coming from; that deep, consuming ache for someone. But I wanted to shake her a little. I did find her a bit tedious at times; Carly in Raw Blue was full of emotional baggage but she was never, er, pathetic. But I understood her attraction to Kane, and I think her longing was captured realistically.

Hmm. An ambitious, unique, and frequently lovely book. Not 100% sold though.

Saltwater Vampires by Kirsty Murray

First published in 2010 by Penguin

Picked up Saltwater  Vampires after falling in love with Eagar’s Raw Blue. For me, this one was not in the same league. But there were lots of things I enjoyed and appreciated about it.

Saltwater Vampires is like a weird mesh of old-world type vampires invading the very contemporary Rocky Head music-festival scene – an old-school sensibility meets a young, hip awareness complete with all the typical modern teen emotions. For me, it wasn’t quite a perfect match, and that was my main problem with the book. I appreciated it, but I didn’t really get it. I felt there was perhaps a little too much going on. The way the three distinct story overtones overlapped was all a little too complicated, with the different stories becoming distractions from the other stories to the point where I couldn’t really commit to any of them.

I liked the ‘contemporary YA’ overtone the best, and this is what I think Eagar excels at. Jamie and his gang of friends and vamp-busters are all funny and likeable and totally cool and all the rest, and their interactions are true to life and affectionately written. I liked where Eagar was taking their emotional stories, but the nature of the book – with all it’s time-jumping and shifting perspectives and what-not – means I never really got involved, like I did with Carly in Raw Blue.

This is a book all unto its own genre – it’s not a conventional vamp story, especially as we’ve come to know them from YA, and it’s not quite contemporary Aussie YA-lit. I do feel that with everything that was going on, it was more suited to an adult readership. Of course I’m all for YA pushing conventions, but I felt the plot, pacing, stories, scope, etc, would just be a better fit for ‘adult fiction’. But I did enjoy its novelty, and also the fact that these vamps were ugly and nasty – something to be scared of, disgusted by, instead of romanticised and smitten by. The whole book had a good grittiness to it.

Aussie setting is used well – the beach, the coastal town, the music festival – in a way that’s familiar but then, as Eagar works her word magic, into something strange and atmospheric and full of the unknown. Particularly the night-surfing scene and when Jamie’s bike breaks down in the national park – fantastic stuff.

I enjoyed the final big ‘showdown’ scene at the end – it provides a nice pay-off, gives the whole book a sense of urgency, and is fun to read. I found the final ‘dealing with the vamps’ (at the festival) a bit weird but that’s a minor quibble – I guess I’m just used to vamps crumbling to dust or something.

Also, a teeny bit long. Weird and wonderful and well-written but not quite perfect –kept me entertained, but just a little too much going on. 

Friday Musings

"Except I can sit here and think like this all night and you know what it does? It starts a bushfire in me. My chest tightens and my jaw clamps and my hands shake and I can feel it burning me up and there's just no relief from it. I want to drive and even then I don't think I could crash hard enough ... I'm glad I never told anybody ... Because that'd be just like letting it happen again. Once they know they've got hold of your shame, they can shake it out and hold it up for all the world to see. And you become less than it. You become something disgusting. Tainted. Stained. Soiled."

~From Raw Blue, by Kirsty Eagar

Raw Blue, by Kirsty Eagar

Published by Penguin, 2009

Loved this book – it has become one of my favourite reads of the year. Once I started reading I didn’t want to put it down. Very deserving of all the praise I’ve seen heaped on it (and what encouraged me to finally pick it up and see what all the fuss was about).

Carly has dropped out of uni. She feels like a disappointment to her parents and moves away, working a monotonous kitchen job so she can devote the rest of her time to what she really loves – surfing. In the ocean, Carly feels like she belongs, and doesn’t have to think about what happened to her two years ago at Schoolies. Except then she meets local boy Ryan, and his presence in her life means she will have to face up to her problems, or let the past prevent her from truly being happy.

This is a great young adult novel that is authentic and involving. It has trauma and anguish but the story and emotion is always wonderfully controlled. There is a quality of self-assurance to the writing – it is clear Eagar knows what she wants to say and has tapped into the best and truest way of saying it. This is not a sentimental book, and that’s because the focus is on Carly’s anger. It  is the anger that provides the fuel for the story – it sets up the pacing, the themes, the prose. Despite all the emotional brevity, Raw Blue feels lean and whipped into shape. There is an urgency to it that is quite addictive – I was drawn in by how far Carly could push herself and let others push her until she just completely cracked.

I grew up with the beach, and I love it, and Eagar too seems to have an obvious affection for the ocean, the surfing culture, and the people who are a part of it. This really shines through in her writing. Personalities are quickly drawn and dominate the pages in much the same way they dominate the ocean. Their nuances, the way they speak, their attitudes – I feel like I know these people. I do know these people. It is fascinating to see these familiar types observed and brought to life so realistically (and fondly, even if they are a total ass).

I just love this book because it really does feel so honest and real – the people and the situations are ones I have come across a million times before. And yet they are never boring or lazy; they are written in a way that makes me come to them with fresh eyes. I also think Eagar has excellently captured how it is to work in a kitchen, or ‘behind-the-scenes’ at a cafe or restaurant. I remember working in a few as a teenager, and I swear I could have transported myself into the pages of Raw Blue and I would hardly notice the difference.

Not a great deal happens in this book, and there is no big climatic moment. Carly just sinks deeper and deeper, and the good things that happen to her are really only distractions in her seeming intent to self-destruct. The last few chapters show the slow re-emergence of hope and recovery. And yet something about the story made me keep turning and turning the pages. I don’t often really come to ‘care’ about characters, but I did with Carly. I think it’s because despite all the crap and moping about, she doesn’t feel sorry for herself – she just gets on with it, using all her anger to drive herself forward.

A last two things I love about Raw Blue – the distinct Australian tone of it, and the fact that it deals with a university-aged teen. It was a refreshing change from YA that revolves around high school, and actually an age group that I feel in fiction often gets overlooked.