‘The Idea of Perfection’ by Kate Grenville (1999)
Aug 12th, 2007 by abi
The blurb on the back cover reads:
“The Idea of Perfection is a funny and touching romance between two people who’ve given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, pop. 1374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort.
Harley is in Karakarook to foster ‘Heritage’, and Douglas is there to pull down the quaint old Bent Bridge. From day one, they’re on a collision course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites, something happens: something even better than perfection.”
On reading that I was quite excited. I thought it would be funny and romantic with lots of intelligent observations on the idea of ‘Heritage’ in terms of what it is, how we define it, and what it means. Alas, it was slightly funny, slightly romantic and not really anything else.
Apart from the strange writing style that was occasionally beautiful but more often irritiating (no speech marks, annoying use of italics) it was a rather obvious and predictable book.
I did think of giving up at one point but two things spurred me on. Firstly, the character of Harley Savage who I thought was beautifully and convincingly drawn and an excellent anchor amongst a sea of one dimensional, cliched and exaggerated characters. Secondly, the ‘big clever ending’ where Douglas and Harley would cunningly and hilariously get one over on both the small minded ‘it’s only an old bridge’ philisitines and the twee ‘Cobwebbe Crafte Shoppe’ people.
Harley kept me going and rooting for her until the end but that was about all I had to go on as the clever ending never materialised and the interesting thoughts about ‘Heritage’, ‘perfection’ and ‘beauty’ that were hinted at all along were ditched and forgotten.
I don’t want it to seem that I hated or even strongly disliked this book as that would not be fair. I liked it well enough but it had serious flaws and, above all, it promised so much and failed to deliver. It felt like a wasted opportunity.
