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Exploded View
A dangerous man moves in with a mother and her two adolescent children. The man runs an unlicensed mechanic’s workshop at the back of their property. The girl resists the man with silence, and finally with sabotage. She fights him at the place where she believes his heart lives—in the engine of the car.
Set at the close of the 1970s and traversing thousands of kilometres of inland roads, Exploded View is a revelatory interrogation of Australian girlhood.
Must a girl always be a part—how can she become a whole?
Set at the close of the 1970s and traversing thousands of kilometres of inland roads, Exploded View is a revelatory interrogation of Australian girlhood.
Must a girl always be a part—how can she become a whole?
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2019
39 people are currently reading
740 people want to read
About the author
Carrie Tiffany
13 books32 followersCarrie Tiffany was born in 1965 in Halifax, West Yorkshire and migrated to Australia with her family in the early 1970s. She grew up in Perth, Western Australia. In her early twenties she worked as a park ranger in Central Australia.
She moved to Melbourne in 1988 where she began work as a writer, focusing mainly on agriculture. Tiffany took up writing fiction and completed a creative writing course. She completed a master's degree in Creative Writing at RMIT University and is working towards her doctorate at La Trobe University.
Tiffany's debut novel, "Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living", was a remarkable success on its release in 2005, winning several awards and shortlisted for some major awards, including the Miles Franklin Award and the Orange Prize.
Her second novel, "Mateship with Birds (which takes its title from the 1922 book of the same name by ornithologist Alec Chisholm), was published in 2012.
She moved to Melbourne in 1988 where she began work as a writer, focusing mainly on agriculture. Tiffany took up writing fiction and completed a creative writing course. She completed a master's degree in Creative Writing at RMIT University and is working towards her doctorate at La Trobe University.
Tiffany's debut novel, "Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living", was a remarkable success on its release in 2005, winning several awards and shortlisted for some major awards, including the Miles Franklin Award and the Orange Prize.
Her second novel, "Mateship with Birds (which takes its title from the 1922 book of the same name by ornithologist Alec Chisholm), was published in 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
July 4, 2019
A quiet, devastating book.
The story of a 12-yr-old girl who reads a Holden car manual obsessively (how you love books when you’re young). The clear, unadorned writing perfectly suits the narrator & lack of sentiment makes it more poignant as we slowly realise the trauma the girl faces, but cannot name. Tiffany shows the truth in spare prose: lack of protection at home, irrelevance of school & her wish for rescue by the Avon lady.
There’s also dry humour in her bluntness. This too is heart-breaking, as it reminds us that she’s still just a girl, with a child-like way of speaking the truth.
The book is subtle but her innocence shines through as she attempts to cope and be strong.
The story and characters are utterly real, but rather than being gritty, Tiffany has pared back the story and made something beautiful in its honesty.
The story of a 12-yr-old girl who reads a Holden car manual obsessively (how you love books when you’re young). The clear, unadorned writing perfectly suits the narrator & lack of sentiment makes it more poignant as we slowly realise the trauma the girl faces, but cannot name. Tiffany shows the truth in spare prose: lack of protection at home, irrelevance of school & her wish for rescue by the Avon lady.
There’s also dry humour in her bluntness. This too is heart-breaking, as it reminds us that she’s still just a girl, with a child-like way of speaking the truth.
The book is subtle but her innocence shines through as she attempts to cope and be strong.
The story and characters are utterly real, but rather than being gritty, Tiffany has pared back the story and made something beautiful in its honesty.
November 10, 2020
Shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award.
The entire novel is written in the first person from the protagonist’s perspective. We are never given her name. In fact, almost no names are revealed throughout the entire book. The mother is simply “mother”. The neighbor next door is referred to as the “fat-lady”. There is reference to her friend, “Sharon” but this is about the only name used.
The narrative takes the format of a list of anecdotes, and observations that the protagonist, who is a young girl, makes. The reader experiences these memories and observations from the young mind. Often there are situations that the young girl does not fully understand, and she makes her own assessment of the current situation she is in. The young protagonist is extremely inquisitive and curious, going into details about everything she experiences, finding reasons and meaning to everything her young eyes take in. A simple mundane normal task can become quite exciting when seen and explained from her perspective.
There is a character who the protagonist refers to as “Father man” who seems to be a stepfather who runs a car workshop, and this is where we connect with the title of the novel. The young protagonist likes to flip through mechanical manuals when she is alone in the workshop, enjoying the “exploded views” of the car’s engine and parts that reside under the bonnet. Many times, she will compare the workings of a car’s engine to the current topic she is thinking about. This is not the only thing she likes to do when she is alone. At night she sneaks out and drives the cars around.
There is a hint of darkness that surrounds the protagonist. A hint that is hard for the reader to pinpoint, just a general feeling that not all is right with this young girl. It continues through the novel and you get the feeling that a disaster is looming.
Throughout the narrative there are references that the stepfather is sexually abusing or molesting the protagonist. And they grow more obvious as the story progresses. There are also hints at domestic violence being forced on the mother. In one disturbing passage, the father, suddenly, almost on a whim, cuts off the girl’s ponytail.
This novel was a mixed bag for me, there are times where the format that the narrative takes works extremely well, often taking on a poetic style, and then there are times when the protagonist’s observations seem to just be ramblings dragging the reader away from the narrative instead of adding to it. One thing is for certain it is a very ambiguous novel, leaving parts open to interpretation for each individual reader.
Overall an enjoyable read, short, and the type of book that a rereading may reveal points missed and change opinion. I am still trying to understand the ending. 3.5 Stars!
The entire novel is written in the first person from the protagonist’s perspective. We are never given her name. In fact, almost no names are revealed throughout the entire book. The mother is simply “mother”. The neighbor next door is referred to as the “fat-lady”. There is reference to her friend, “Sharon” but this is about the only name used.
The narrative takes the format of a list of anecdotes, and observations that the protagonist, who is a young girl, makes. The reader experiences these memories and observations from the young mind. Often there are situations that the young girl does not fully understand, and she makes her own assessment of the current situation she is in. The young protagonist is extremely inquisitive and curious, going into details about everything she experiences, finding reasons and meaning to everything her young eyes take in. A simple mundane normal task can become quite exciting when seen and explained from her perspective.
There is a character who the protagonist refers to as “Father man” who seems to be a stepfather who runs a car workshop, and this is where we connect with the title of the novel. The young protagonist likes to flip through mechanical manuals when she is alone in the workshop, enjoying the “exploded views” of the car’s engine and parts that reside under the bonnet. Many times, she will compare the workings of a car’s engine to the current topic she is thinking about. This is not the only thing she likes to do when she is alone. At night she sneaks out and drives the cars around.
There is a hint of darkness that surrounds the protagonist. A hint that is hard for the reader to pinpoint, just a general feeling that not all is right with this young girl. It continues through the novel and you get the feeling that a disaster is looming.
Throughout the narrative there are references that the stepfather is sexually abusing or molesting the protagonist. And they grow more obvious as the story progresses. There are also hints at domestic violence being forced on the mother. In one disturbing passage, the father, suddenly, almost on a whim, cuts off the girl’s ponytail.
This novel was a mixed bag for me, there are times where the format that the narrative takes works extremely well, often taking on a poetic style, and then there are times when the protagonist’s observations seem to just be ramblings dragging the reader away from the narrative instead of adding to it. One thing is for certain it is a very ambiguous novel, leaving parts open to interpretation for each individual reader.
Overall an enjoyable read, short, and the type of book that a rereading may reveal points missed and change opinion. I am still trying to understand the ending. 3.5 Stars!
December 15, 2019
The best book written by an Australian I have read this year. Extraordinary writing and an utterly original approach to bleak subject matter.
March 2, 2019
Exploded View is an intense literary piece, written with precision and tuned carefully for maximum emotional effect. This is the sort of novel I wouldn't be surprised to see on the Women's Prize list. Having said that, there is so much darkness in the story that it can be hard going at times, and readers should note triggers for sexual abuse, domestic violence and suicide.
Our narrator lives with her mother, brother and mechanic stepfather in 1970s suburban Australia. The novel follows the family as they prepare for and then take a long road trip, but the heart of this novel is the family dynamic and atmosphere, which feels like a character itself at times. The novel has all the hallmarks of literary fiction: a unique voice, a focus on mood and character rather than plot, and a cumulative effect that you'll find hard to forget even weeks after you finish reading.
The writing is something like Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things crossed with Tim Winton's The Shepherd's Hut - brutal and incisive. Tiffany builds the story's tragedy with a marching sense of inevitability, ratcheting up the tension with ominous foreboding and slips into mechanic-speak to veil darker things.
At times I felt the narrative voice surpassed what could plausibly come from a 12 year old's perspective, but the narrator's experiences make her older than her years too. Tiffany anchors her to the exploded view pages of auto manuals, which show car parts blown out with spaces in between, to explore questions around girlhood and gendered expectations of the time. The device is unusual, particularly initially, but grows more sophisticated and meaningful as the story progresses.
Car-related imagery pervades the story, with particular motifs recurring to great dramatic effect - most notably the gravel arrester bed on the highway. There are a few calmer, even dull moments (particularly on the road trip) to alleviate the intensity. But this isn't a relaxing book to read - the atmosphere is relentlessly dark and palpably taut.
We watch the protagonist's wild fantasies and escalating acts of disobedience and sabotage, and can see them for what they are: coping mechanisms for the abuse she rarely allows herself to confront directly (but which is signposted well enough for readers). Her quest for agency is poignant, and in a perverse way, makes the climax feel somewhat triumphant.
I walked away from this novel disturbed, but also deeply saddened. I know I won't forget this story any time soon, but it's also not something I'm likely to re-read. So a book I would recommend cautiously, for those looking to broaden their perspective, experience skilled writing and who can bear witnessing immense tragedy.
Our narrator lives with her mother, brother and mechanic stepfather in 1970s suburban Australia. The novel follows the family as they prepare for and then take a long road trip, but the heart of this novel is the family dynamic and atmosphere, which feels like a character itself at times. The novel has all the hallmarks of literary fiction: a unique voice, a focus on mood and character rather than plot, and a cumulative effect that you'll find hard to forget even weeks after you finish reading.
The writing is something like Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things crossed with Tim Winton's The Shepherd's Hut - brutal and incisive. Tiffany builds the story's tragedy with a marching sense of inevitability, ratcheting up the tension with ominous foreboding and slips into mechanic-speak to veil darker things.
At times I felt the narrative voice surpassed what could plausibly come from a 12 year old's perspective, but the narrator's experiences make her older than her years too. Tiffany anchors her to the exploded view pages of auto manuals, which show car parts blown out with spaces in between, to explore questions around girlhood and gendered expectations of the time. The device is unusual, particularly initially, but grows more sophisticated and meaningful as the story progresses.
Car-related imagery pervades the story, with particular motifs recurring to great dramatic effect - most notably the gravel arrester bed on the highway. There are a few calmer, even dull moments (particularly on the road trip) to alleviate the intensity. But this isn't a relaxing book to read - the atmosphere is relentlessly dark and palpably taut.
We watch the protagonist's wild fantasies and escalating acts of disobedience and sabotage, and can see them for what they are: coping mechanisms for the abuse she rarely allows herself to confront directly (but which is signposted well enough for readers). Her quest for agency is poignant, and in a perverse way, makes the climax feel somewhat triumphant.
I walked away from this novel disturbed, but also deeply saddened. I know I won't forget this story any time soon, but it's also not something I'm likely to re-read. So a book I would recommend cautiously, for those looking to broaden their perspective, experience skilled writing and who can bear witnessing immense tragedy.
March 24, 2019
Short and brutal book, about a deeply dysfunctional family through the eyes of a 15 year old girl.
August 11, 2019
When I heard Carrie Tiffany speak at Adelaide Writers Week in March I wondered whether I would want to read this, her latest novel. I knew it would be dark and disturbing. I knew that she had used a Holden car manual as a starting point for her imaginative journey and I wondered if that would work for me.
I so admired and enjoyed her previous two books, partly for their originality but also for their human warmth, I was not sure whether her new direction would be something I could bear to read. But how could I not read a new Tiffany novel?
Now, having finished the book, I have mixed responses to it. Despite the occasional shaft of light, it is an extremely sad book to read. But it certainly made an impression on me, with its originality, its fearlessness and the author’s amazing control of technique. It is an important contribution to feminist Australian literature and to giving voice and agency to girls who seem powerless.
I learned that an exploded view is a diagram, picture or technical drawing of an object, that shows the relationship or order of assembly of various parts. It shows the components of an object slightly separated by distance, or suspended in surrounding space. In this case, the exploded view of a Holden car engine is what becomes the symbol for the narrator’s life.
We never know the name of this adolescent girl or those of her mother (lost in her Mills and Boon romances) her brother or the dangerous ‘father man’, an unlicensed car repairer in the workshop at the back of the family block. In this 1970s family the parts that should work together to form a coherent whole are separate, exploding from within. Can a family, or a woman, become a whole or are they condemned to always be part of an exploded view?
The girl’s view and her voice are strikingly original. Tiffany has spoken of how maintaining that voice was central to her writing of this claustrophobic and menacing novel. It is a ‘voice from within’ because the girl has chosen not to speak aloud to anyone in her family. She is a school truant, a petty thief and enters the houses of her neighbours in exploratory escapades. There is a ‘time before’ when she was a child and part of a happy family. There are brief moments of memory that give her joy. But the atmosphere now is one of threat especially when father man locks them all into the house at night and she waits in dread for what he may do to her.
Later at night, the girl escapes to the workshop where she vandalises cars left for repair by father man or drives a car out onto the road which unwinds before her to some kind of freedom. The language of car parts, both ugly and poetic, suggests sexual abuse. “It’s not a crime if your mouth does it. Soft parts or hard parts, it’s just the same, your two lips making a seal around the hose, your teeth pushing through tired rubber… Afterwards the oil and the bits of rubber stick to the insides of your cheeks and are foul in your mouth so you need to spit them into the dirt.”
The novel is written in three parts. My Family effectively sets the scene, the character of the narrator and the mood of fearful anticipation. A Trip is a series of short paragraphs, written from the narrator’s point of view as she travels with her family across Australia. The girl feels safe because although it is uncomfortable to sleep across the hump behind the front seat of the Holden, she is safe there from father man. She is safe even to imagine a normal sexual experience with someone her own age. Yet the tone of the novel remains steadfastly downbeat, with the predominant images those of damage and death, particularly of the insects, birds and animals that become road kill. The last section, Home Again, brings back father man’s aggression and abuse. It is time once more for the girl to carry out her acts of sabotage and plan her possible escape.
All in all, this is a remarkable achievement and a novel that I think I will remember for some time, even though I found it deeply depressing. As The Lifted Brow review says:
"This tense novel, held tightly with elegant restraint, is hard to read for the best possible reasons. It asks a lot of its reader, but it offers the most satisfying rewards."
I so admired and enjoyed her previous two books, partly for their originality but also for their human warmth, I was not sure whether her new direction would be something I could bear to read. But how could I not read a new Tiffany novel?
Now, having finished the book, I have mixed responses to it. Despite the occasional shaft of light, it is an extremely sad book to read. But it certainly made an impression on me, with its originality, its fearlessness and the author’s amazing control of technique. It is an important contribution to feminist Australian literature and to giving voice and agency to girls who seem powerless.
I learned that an exploded view is a diagram, picture or technical drawing of an object, that shows the relationship or order of assembly of various parts. It shows the components of an object slightly separated by distance, or suspended in surrounding space. In this case, the exploded view of a Holden car engine is what becomes the symbol for the narrator’s life.
We never know the name of this adolescent girl or those of her mother (lost in her Mills and Boon romances) her brother or the dangerous ‘father man’, an unlicensed car repairer in the workshop at the back of the family block. In this 1970s family the parts that should work together to form a coherent whole are separate, exploding from within. Can a family, or a woman, become a whole or are they condemned to always be part of an exploded view?
The girl’s view and her voice are strikingly original. Tiffany has spoken of how maintaining that voice was central to her writing of this claustrophobic and menacing novel. It is a ‘voice from within’ because the girl has chosen not to speak aloud to anyone in her family. She is a school truant, a petty thief and enters the houses of her neighbours in exploratory escapades. There is a ‘time before’ when she was a child and part of a happy family. There are brief moments of memory that give her joy. But the atmosphere now is one of threat especially when father man locks them all into the house at night and she waits in dread for what he may do to her.
Later at night, the girl escapes to the workshop where she vandalises cars left for repair by father man or drives a car out onto the road which unwinds before her to some kind of freedom. The language of car parts, both ugly and poetic, suggests sexual abuse. “It’s not a crime if your mouth does it. Soft parts or hard parts, it’s just the same, your two lips making a seal around the hose, your teeth pushing through tired rubber… Afterwards the oil and the bits of rubber stick to the insides of your cheeks and are foul in your mouth so you need to spit them into the dirt.”
The novel is written in three parts. My Family effectively sets the scene, the character of the narrator and the mood of fearful anticipation. A Trip is a series of short paragraphs, written from the narrator’s point of view as she travels with her family across Australia. The girl feels safe because although it is uncomfortable to sleep across the hump behind the front seat of the Holden, she is safe there from father man. She is safe even to imagine a normal sexual experience with someone her own age. Yet the tone of the novel remains steadfastly downbeat, with the predominant images those of damage and death, particularly of the insects, birds and animals that become road kill. The last section, Home Again, brings back father man’s aggression and abuse. It is time once more for the girl to carry out her acts of sabotage and plan her possible escape.
All in all, this is a remarkable achievement and a novel that I think I will remember for some time, even though I found it deeply depressing. As The Lifted Brow review says:
"This tense novel, held tightly with elegant restraint, is hard to read for the best possible reasons. It asks a lot of its reader, but it offers the most satisfying rewards."
Read
November 23, 2020‘This tense novel, held tightly with elegant restraint, is hard to read for the best possible reasons. It asks a lot of its reader, but it offers the most satisfying rewards.’
The Lifted Brow
‘Exploded View has all the exhilaration of a revved-up Holden’
Age
‘Exploded View…(is) a measured, poetic focus on the small details in nature, roads and relationships.’
Arts Hub
‘This is Tiffany’s triumph…her prose has the alert, truncated poetry of a preternatural wise child—lyrical without being florid, clear-sighted by unhappy with that early knowledge…It’s title might suggest splintering of focus, but the line drawn in Exploded View is unwavering, tragic, and heads straight down.’
Monthly
‘This is a very different novel to Tiffany’s early books…The language is glitter, angrier and focalised exquisitely through this girl’s perspective.’
Australian
‘Carrie Tiffany’s third novel…As spare as a poem, as potent as a depth charge.’
SA Weekend
‘Tiffany pulls off something remarkable here: erecting a narrative structure almost buckling under its own weight, but that ultimately holds up. Challenging and devastating, this is an important read.’
Overland
'Exploded View is an offbeat coming-of-age story...there is hardly a detail that does not reverberate beyond itself, evoke some deeper implication.’
Australian Book Review
Shortlisted for Voss Literary Prize 2020
The Lifted Brow
‘Exploded View has all the exhilaration of a revved-up Holden’
Age
‘Exploded View…(is) a measured, poetic focus on the small details in nature, roads and relationships.’
Arts Hub
‘This is Tiffany’s triumph…her prose has the alert, truncated poetry of a preternatural wise child—lyrical without being florid, clear-sighted by unhappy with that early knowledge…It’s title might suggest splintering of focus, but the line drawn in Exploded View is unwavering, tragic, and heads straight down.’
Monthly
‘This is a very different novel to Tiffany’s early books…The language is glitter, angrier and focalised exquisitely through this girl’s perspective.’
Australian
‘Carrie Tiffany’s third novel…As spare as a poem, as potent as a depth charge.’
SA Weekend
‘Tiffany pulls off something remarkable here: erecting a narrative structure almost buckling under its own weight, but that ultimately holds up. Challenging and devastating, this is an important read.’
Overland
'Exploded View is an offbeat coming-of-age story...there is hardly a detail that does not reverberate beyond itself, evoke some deeper implication.’
Australian Book Review
Shortlisted for Voss Literary Prize 2020
March 28, 2019
Every word, every sentence, feels weighed and measured in this beautifully poetic and spare account of childhood trauma. On the surface it is a masterfully subtle and restrained story, but underneath, in the subtext, it hits hard. Loved it.
August 26, 2021
There's a lot of brutality in this for sure—I physically recoiled a few times while reading, and its grimness and banality occasionally felt asphyxiating. But the consciousness of this unnamed narrator builds so convincingly. It's an anatomy of a particularly Australian loneliness, one beyond language, where distance and stoicism are right down at the substratum of being. The extended metaphor of the Holden manual works because it comes to represent this girl's sense of the relations between people, as well as her own physical development. At first I thought maybe there was too little narrative, that the whole road trip section was a little too thin, but then its sense of claustrophobia made me feel sick and I thought no way, when was the last time a novel made me feel literally sick? I loved this book, and it seems to me to be way under-read.
May 18, 2020
This is probably too cleverly done for my little brain at the moment.
I really love Carrie Tiffany's other novels, especially her debut, so it's difficult to not give this one a higher rating but while it had it's moments the experimental clipped style didn't really appeal to me. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for something a bit different and need to go back to reading conversational types of narratives rather than stream of consciousness and picking out what is happening more by what is not said than what is hinted at on the page.
I'd encourage anyone to see for themselves though and see what they make of it.
I really love Carrie Tiffany's other novels, especially her debut, so it's difficult to not give this one a higher rating but while it had it's moments the experimental clipped style didn't really appeal to me. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for something a bit different and need to go back to reading conversational types of narratives rather than stream of consciousness and picking out what is happening more by what is not said than what is hinted at on the page.
I'd encourage anyone to see for themselves though and see what they make of it.
February 5, 2020
So tightly written, so keenly observed - this is a masterpiece of storytelling.
A story about family violence and abuse, a young girl takes back power by withholding speech and quietly sabotaging her abusive step fathers business. I could not put this down.
A story about family violence and abuse, a young girl takes back power by withholding speech and quietly sabotaging her abusive step fathers business. I could not put this down.
April 11, 2019
This is a devastating book, with a lot of beauty but very little hope. The writing is magnificent. I feel like I held my breath the whole way through.
February 4, 2020
A book of measured ferocity; taut, sharp; it left me feeling cataclysmic, on the verge of wreckage, as if I lost some of my more delicate machinations along the way.
April 23, 2019
My heart broke so many times during this read. One of the best fiction novels I’ve read in such a long time. Carrie Tiffany is an incredible writer. So many times I found myself flicking to the back inner leaf of the dust cover, to look at her author’s headshot - wondering how a person works with words the way she does, what sort of a mind it takes. How can you make a book that is, in a way, a creative rewriting of a Holden workshop manual (though this is the most reductionist way of approaching it) so beautiful, affecting? I’m lost for words. I will be thinking about this book for a long while to come.
July 3, 2019
3.5 rounded up.
At just 191 pages long, Exploded View may be short but it still packs a punch! The story is incredibly tense and evocative. It’s narrated by an unnamed and voiceless adolescent girl who is being abused by her father figure and is dark and devoid of hope.
I liked this coming of age story, but I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if the mechanical references had been toned down a bit. The girl having mechanical knowledge is crucial to the story, so I can understand why they’re there, but they were just a bit dull for my liking and I found myself zoning out and losing my connection to the story while reading them. I absolutely loved the writing though—it’s sparse, yet beautiful, and filled with subtext.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Text Publishing in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
At just 191 pages long, Exploded View may be short but it still packs a punch! The story is incredibly tense and evocative. It’s narrated by an unnamed and voiceless adolescent girl who is being abused by her father figure and is dark and devoid of hope.
I liked this coming of age story, but I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if the mechanical references had been toned down a bit. The girl having mechanical knowledge is crucial to the story, so I can understand why they’re there, but they were just a bit dull for my liking and I found myself zoning out and losing my connection to the story while reading them. I absolutely loved the writing though—it’s sparse, yet beautiful, and filled with subtext.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Text Publishing in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
July 30, 2021
Exploded View
by Carrie Tiffany
Hmmm. Perhaps the fact that cars are quite possibly the least interesting things that I can imagine explains my coolness to this one. It's a bleak and sombre book, but I never quite believed it. The novel progresses through what is essentially one unbroken stream of consciousness from the mind of a young girl.
Our narrator - dealing with significant neglect and abuse - struck me as too uneven to fully accept as authentic. This may well be due to her use of a Holden car manual to process her trauma. Still, there is an incongruity to her singular prescience, acumen and utter lack of agency that struck me as unconvincing.
There is an implausibility to the car journey that serves as the centre point of the story, which is not helped by the feeling that the author gave up on it a third of the way through. I found the entire thing uneven and frustrating, which is disappointing as there are moments of great writing.
⭐ ⭐ 1/2
Hmmm. Perhaps the fact that cars are quite possibly the least interesting things that I can imagine explains my coolness to this one. It's a bleak and sombre book, but I never quite believed it. The novel progresses through what is essentially one unbroken stream of consciousness from the mind of a young girl.
Our narrator - dealing with significant neglect and abuse - struck me as too uneven to fully accept as authentic. This may well be due to her use of a Holden car manual to process her trauma. Still, there is an incongruity to her singular prescience, acumen and utter lack of agency that struck me as unconvincing.
There is an implausibility to the car journey that serves as the centre point of the story, which is not helped by the feeling that the author gave up on it a third of the way through. I found the entire thing uneven and frustrating, which is disappointing as there are moments of great writing.
⭐ ⭐ 1/2
August 3, 2019
I don't really know what to say about this. There's something about the way Carrie Tiffany writes—it's beautiful but jarring and uncomfortable at the same time. Her endings as well—I never know if I'm satisfied with them or not.
February 23, 2023
This was a compassionate, unflinching perspective of childhood abuse from the viewpoint of our unnamed narrator.
Our narrator lives with her mother, brother, and violent stepfather "fatherman". Using the rules of a battleground that the fatherman will understand, she sabotages car parts in his mechanics workshop, trying to stay in control of her life.
Our narrator lives with her mother, brother, and violent stepfather "fatherman". Using the rules of a battleground that the fatherman will understand, she sabotages car parts in his mechanics workshop, trying to stay in control of her life.
April 19, 2019
Author Carrie Tiffany was one of the first Australian writers to instil in me a love of writing and an ambition that I could perhaps write myself. Her previous books Mateship with Birds (which won the inaugural Stella Prize) and Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living are both wonderful examples of a writer who truly loves words and delights in the craft of writing. Her recent novel Exploded View (Text Publishing 2019) is a slim volume narrated from the perspective of a young girl who doesn’t speak (and in fact there is almost no dialogue at all in the book), and recounts with spare and beautiful prose her abusive life and her dreams of escape.
Set in suburbia in the 1970’s, the 12-year-old lives with her brother, her mother and her stepfather, whom she calls father man. Father man is an unregistered mechanic who by day does dodgy vehicle repairs in the shed behind the house, and by night harasses and torments his family with the power he wields. The girl holds dear a tattered Holden workshop manual and uses it to gain precious knowledge about what matters most to father man. The book first introduces us to the girl and her family at their home, then takes us with them as they go on an insufferable road trip – eight days’ driving, three days’ staying at a place none of them enjoys, and eight days’ driving back again, eating at roadhouses and sleeping in the car. The other main aspect of the book’s narrative is the girl’s nocturnal activities – she rebalances the notion of power the only way she knows how, by tampering with father man's engines and completed repairs, and using her mechanical knowledge (gained from many nights of tinkering with other people’s cars in the dark) to subtly undo his work: a handful of needles, dirt or feathers added, or merely the loosening of screws or the piecing of tubes. She takes the cars for joyrides too, secretive night-time drives, and also quietly breaks into the houses of neighbours when they are out, watching the television or using the bathroom. In this way she wrests some control from a life that is otherwise very much determined by others.
Exploded View is an exquisitely-written book. Not a word is wasted. Every sentence feels real and honest and true. This family is achingly broken and disturbingly unsettling. The hints of abuse are so understated and matter-of-fact – a line here, a word there – that you could almost miss them at first. But gradually the references build and the sinister nature of father man becomes apparent.
There are so many perfect phrases in this book. One of my favourite, which I think sums up the book really well, is this simple sentence: ‘I don’t know what other families are doing, but I know they aren’t doing this.’ The girl realises her life is not normal but she has no idea what normal is, or how she could attain it. She can only make the best of what she has. Her acts of sabotage balance the otherwise lack of agency she has about what happens to her.
Because Exploded View is narrated by a child, the perspective is through the prism of a child, and some of the views she expresses and the comments or thoughts she makes in her head are naïve and sometimes views that we would criticise in an adult (eg her dismissal of the ‘fat woman’ next door). This obliviousness, candour or unsophistication may be uncomfortable for some readers, or be seen merely as childish vulnerability and guilelessness by others.
The title Exploded View refers to the diagrams that depict the working parts of a car or engine, with each part labelled and separated out around the main section. I think it also refers to this family and their life, how each character is separate and apart, and about what it would take to make it whole.
Set in suburbia in the 1970’s, the 12-year-old lives with her brother, her mother and her stepfather, whom she calls father man. Father man is an unregistered mechanic who by day does dodgy vehicle repairs in the shed behind the house, and by night harasses and torments his family with the power he wields. The girl holds dear a tattered Holden workshop manual and uses it to gain precious knowledge about what matters most to father man. The book first introduces us to the girl and her family at their home, then takes us with them as they go on an insufferable road trip – eight days’ driving, three days’ staying at a place none of them enjoys, and eight days’ driving back again, eating at roadhouses and sleeping in the car. The other main aspect of the book’s narrative is the girl’s nocturnal activities – she rebalances the notion of power the only way she knows how, by tampering with father man's engines and completed repairs, and using her mechanical knowledge (gained from many nights of tinkering with other people’s cars in the dark) to subtly undo his work: a handful of needles, dirt or feathers added, or merely the loosening of screws or the piecing of tubes. She takes the cars for joyrides too, secretive night-time drives, and also quietly breaks into the houses of neighbours when they are out, watching the television or using the bathroom. In this way she wrests some control from a life that is otherwise very much determined by others.
Exploded View is an exquisitely-written book. Not a word is wasted. Every sentence feels real and honest and true. This family is achingly broken and disturbingly unsettling. The hints of abuse are so understated and matter-of-fact – a line here, a word there – that you could almost miss them at first. But gradually the references build and the sinister nature of father man becomes apparent.
There are so many perfect phrases in this book. One of my favourite, which I think sums up the book really well, is this simple sentence: ‘I don’t know what other families are doing, but I know they aren’t doing this.’ The girl realises her life is not normal but she has no idea what normal is, or how she could attain it. She can only make the best of what she has. Her acts of sabotage balance the otherwise lack of agency she has about what happens to her.
Because Exploded View is narrated by a child, the perspective is through the prism of a child, and some of the views she expresses and the comments or thoughts she makes in her head are naïve and sometimes views that we would criticise in an adult (eg her dismissal of the ‘fat woman’ next door). This obliviousness, candour or unsophistication may be uncomfortable for some readers, or be seen merely as childish vulnerability and guilelessness by others.
The title Exploded View refers to the diagrams that depict the working parts of a car or engine, with each part labelled and separated out around the main section. I think it also refers to this family and their life, how each character is separate and apart, and about what it would take to make it whole.
November 29, 2020
Exploded View doesn't quite capture the charm and humour of Carrie Tiffany's 2013 Stella Prize winning Mateship With Birds. It has quite a different atmosphere, a certain darkness.
Exploded View has a flippant, short-hand tone of writing, as the unnamed narrator is a somewhat troubled teenage girl, but with an underlying tension, a feeling of general unease, which has more to do with what is what she does not reveal than what she does.
Set in 1970s Australia, the girl lives with her mother, her brother and a man that she refers to only as 'father man', supposedly a step-father or a man who is cohabiting with her mother.
Apart from a couple of friends and some place names, there are no names in this story. Even the neighbour is only ever referred to as the 'fat lady'.
The girl, who seems to exist in a world she has created for herself, and who skips school far too often - when a letter about her non-attendance arrives, she crosses out her name, writes in the name of her neighbour and puts it in the fat lady's letterbox - and spends her time at the tip or driving at night the cars her father has in his unlicensed workshop for repair.
The story is told in three parts. My Family provides some general background and introduces the reader to the peculiar environment the girl inhabits. A Trip describes a long road journey across Australia in father man's Holden, driving eight days to spend three days in a friend's house, and then a further eight days to return home.
The final section is Home Again, which takes the narrative to a concerning but somewhat obscure conclusion.
As I mentioned, the prose is fragmentary, written in short and simple sentences, flippant in tone, the language of a poorly educated but nevertheless observant child.
But underlying the naivety and childishness is a pervading sense of tension, of foreboding, of mental dysfunction, and of forces the girl is trying to escape or avoid.
There are a few fleeting but undeniable hints that father man may be sexually abusing the girl. Her retaliation takes the form of silence (a refusal to speak for weeks on end) and sabotage. She describes in some detail her preferred methods for sabotaging the mechanical repair work her father performs.
There are dark secrets at play here, and to a large extent we can only guess at what they are. They remain undefined and blurry around the edges.
Tiffany has managed to combine simplicity of language with a sense of profound sadness, a feeling of compassion in partnership with a sense of despair, that leaves the reader hoping, almost against hope, that things might turn out OK for our teenage narrator.
Exploded View has a flippant, short-hand tone of writing, as the unnamed narrator is a somewhat troubled teenage girl, but with an underlying tension, a feeling of general unease, which has more to do with what is what she does not reveal than what she does.
Set in 1970s Australia, the girl lives with her mother, her brother and a man that she refers to only as 'father man', supposedly a step-father or a man who is cohabiting with her mother.
Apart from a couple of friends and some place names, there are no names in this story. Even the neighbour is only ever referred to as the 'fat lady'.
The girl, who seems to exist in a world she has created for herself, and who skips school far too often - when a letter about her non-attendance arrives, she crosses out her name, writes in the name of her neighbour and puts it in the fat lady's letterbox - and spends her time at the tip or driving at night the cars her father has in his unlicensed workshop for repair.
The story is told in three parts. My Family provides some general background and introduces the reader to the peculiar environment the girl inhabits. A Trip describes a long road journey across Australia in father man's Holden, driving eight days to spend three days in a friend's house, and then a further eight days to return home.
The final section is Home Again, which takes the narrative to a concerning but somewhat obscure conclusion.
As I mentioned, the prose is fragmentary, written in short and simple sentences, flippant in tone, the language of a poorly educated but nevertheless observant child.
But underlying the naivety and childishness is a pervading sense of tension, of foreboding, of mental dysfunction, and of forces the girl is trying to escape or avoid.
There are a few fleeting but undeniable hints that father man may be sexually abusing the girl. Her retaliation takes the form of silence (a refusal to speak for weeks on end) and sabotage. She describes in some detail her preferred methods for sabotaging the mechanical repair work her father performs.
There are dark secrets at play here, and to a large extent we can only guess at what they are. They remain undefined and blurry around the edges.
Tiffany has managed to combine simplicity of language with a sense of profound sadness, a feeling of compassion in partnership with a sense of despair, that leaves the reader hoping, almost against hope, that things might turn out OK for our teenage narrator.
November 27, 2020
A dark masterpiece.
This is the kind of book you read because you like words but it's also the type of book that tells a gloomy story with a disturbing mood.
Set in Western Australia during the 1970s where television programs and car models add to the understanding of the time and place. None other than the Avon lady appears like a blow-up swan floating in an ocean of suffering but she is not there to rescue she is just doing her job.
From the viewpoint of a young girl who exists in a dangerous environment, her thoughts deliver the story with a unique perspective. In her eyes, she wants to be whole but feels like a used car that has been pulled apart and needs repair. She's unsure of how she can escape her hell but she fights in any way she can.
Minor rebellion keeps the unnamed protagonist going, treading water in a life where she is unprotected from her Father Man, who spends his time with his head under the bonnet of a car and his nights locking the family inside.
Much is unsaid in this story, drenched with car analogies that are detailed and emotive but open for interpretation. It's not about the plot, it's about the feeling.
All the descriptive ways in which humans are like and unlike cars is what I loved most about this book. The concept and viewpoint of how this young girl sees herself. Alike and yet unfixable.
A poetic but challenging read.
This is the kind of book you read because you like words but it's also the type of book that tells a gloomy story with a disturbing mood.
Set in Western Australia during the 1970s where television programs and car models add to the understanding of the time and place. None other than the Avon lady appears like a blow-up swan floating in an ocean of suffering but she is not there to rescue she is just doing her job.
From the viewpoint of a young girl who exists in a dangerous environment, her thoughts deliver the story with a unique perspective. In her eyes, she wants to be whole but feels like a used car that has been pulled apart and needs repair. She's unsure of how she can escape her hell but she fights in any way she can.
Minor rebellion keeps the unnamed protagonist going, treading water in a life where she is unprotected from her Father Man, who spends his time with his head under the bonnet of a car and his nights locking the family inside.
Much is unsaid in this story, drenched with car analogies that are detailed and emotive but open for interpretation. It's not about the plot, it's about the feeling.
All the descriptive ways in which humans are like and unlike cars is what I loved most about this book. The concept and viewpoint of how this young girl sees herself. Alike and yet unfixable.
A poetic but challenging read.
May 31, 2019
Exploded View
by Carrie Tiffany is a brutal and intense novel about the abuse of a teenage girl.
The unnamed narrator focuses on her family - her mother, her brother and her mother's new partner, referred to as 'father man'. The man runs an unlicensed mechanic’s workshop in the backyard. The girl shows her resistance with the only weapons she has at her disposal - silence and sabotage. She slips out at night to remove bolts, sever pipes and loosen screws in the engines the man is working on.
A family road trip interrupts the grim trajectory of the story but the respite for the girl is brief, and on their return, the abuse resumes.
The car engine is used to represent different elements of the girl's story. The title of novel is borrowed from the types of photographs in the car repair manual that the girl pores over -
But it is in exploring how the girl fits in to her violent world that reveals the power in Tiffany's parred back prose. Comparisons are made between engines and the human body, giving the girl's trauma a tangibility that was difficult to read (the feeling of foreboding, the feeling of fear that grips at the throat? That).
and
It culminates in the girl's heartbreaking understanding of her own trauma -
I have always admired Tiffany's writing - she's economic but emotionally intense. In Exploded View, the girl's narration is detached, disassociated for the most part, and yet occasionally we catch a glimpse of her naivety, and in an instant, Tiffany pulls the reader in very, very close -
I was reminded of Tiffany saying that when writing a novel, she focuses on the individual sentences - she writes them separately, and then finds their order. You can see that in this book - fragments build the broad picture: the girl's midnight drives and visits to the tip; her mother's neglect and preoccupation with Mills & Boon romances; father man's violent outbursts at the dinner table - and as these small, tense scenes unfold, the story gathers momentum. Although it is an undeniably horrifying story, there's beauty in Tiffany's words -
This book is devastating because while fictional, we know its truth for many girls.
4.5/5 Tense, tragic and poetic.
The unnamed narrator focuses on her family - her mother, her brother and her mother's new partner, referred to as 'father man'. The man runs an unlicensed mechanic’s workshop in the backyard. The girl shows her resistance with the only weapons she has at her disposal - silence and sabotage. She slips out at night to remove bolts, sever pipes and loosen screws in the engines the man is working on.
A family road trip interrupts the grim trajectory of the story but the respite for the girl is brief, and on their return, the abuse resumes.
My door, I know, will be opened. Because of the trip there's a gap and time must be made up for. Because of the trip father man experienced losses and now it's time to pay. It's urgent like I've seen a dog is, or a horse or a bull.
The car engine is used to represent different elements of the girl's story. The title of novel is borrowed from the types of photographs in the car repair manual that the girl pores over -
An exploded view is to show the spaces between the parts and how they fit together.
But it is in exploring how the girl fits in to her violent world that reveals the power in Tiffany's parred back prose. Comparisons are made between engines and the human body, giving the girl's trauma a tangibility that was difficult to read (the feeling of foreboding, the feeling of fear that grips at the throat? That).
In any machine the smallest part is often where the break occurs.
and
It's a choice to hurt yourself before someone else gets the chance.
It culminates in the girl's heartbreaking understanding of her own trauma -
Father man has taken my chance to tell all of the parts of my story. There will always be this part that can never be told.
I have always admired Tiffany's writing - she's economic but emotionally intense. In Exploded View, the girl's narration is detached, disassociated for the most part, and yet occasionally we catch a glimpse of her naivety, and in an instant, Tiffany pulls the reader in very, very close -
I am brown-haired. There's only so much yellow hair to go around and people miss out. If you are yellow you have a yellow name like Jodie or Denise and you have to wear shorts. If everyone was yellow it wouldn't be so special and men would take another colour and make it the best for themselves.
There are many happy times in my family. The happiest time is when my mother loses a contact lens. She calls us to her and we drop to our knees and pat the floor at her feet.
I was reminded of Tiffany saying that when writing a novel, she focuses on the individual sentences - she writes them separately, and then finds their order. You can see that in this book - fragments build the broad picture: the girl's midnight drives and visits to the tip; her mother's neglect and preoccupation with Mills & Boon romances; father man's violent outbursts at the dinner table - and as these small, tense scenes unfold, the story gathers momentum. Although it is an undeniably horrifying story, there's beauty in Tiffany's words -
I wind my window down, let the warm insect air hit my face. The view behind us is long now, so long it loops back on itself like the toffee they stretch in the caravans at the royal show.
Some of the bowls ladies have blue hair, some have lilac hair, but most have white hair. It must be nice to stand on the green carpet grass but I wouldn't want to wear pantyhose or put my hands around the cold black ball. Some of the ladies might be sisters. Even when they are old, sisters can be next to each other. It doesn't seem like a sad life.
This book is devastating because while fictional, we know its truth for many girls.
4.5/5 Tense, tragic and poetic.
December 19, 2021
An original and compelling work told from the perspective of a young adolescent girl. Initially I found it hard to connect with the writing. This is a work to be read with focus and intensity. The writing is sparse yet evocative. The sinister undercurrent is slowly revealed with devastating effect. Tiffany is a writer of immense talent.
November 17, 2020
Very much literary fiction - not plot driven, not character driven, I don't know what it was! But I really liked it 4.5*
May 15, 2019
This novel is like a master class in writing. Initially I was a bit disdainful – I’ve read a lot of Australian books lately that are told from the POV of a vulnerable child or teenager. I’m thinking here about ‘The Restorer’, about both of Sophie Laguna’s novels, about ‘Boy Swallows Universe’.
This novel features an unnamed teenage girl as narrator, with her mother, stepfather and brother forming the kernel of the narrative. The novel is set in 1970s Western Australia. The stepfather runs an unlicensed garage on the property and the ‘exploded view’ of the title refers to the kinds of diagrams you find in car manuals – technical drawings of the inner workings of a motor showing each granular, separated piece in interaction or relationship with the next.
The girl understands engines and how they fit together. The predictability, the containment of the engine and its functioning stand in contrast to the lack of power that she feels in relation to her family, especially her stepfather whose unseen menace towards her is always present. He bullies the entire family; there’s a scene where the mother and children sit in the car looking at their house; It’s a moment of stillness, but also, briefly, of possibility – ‘She could always change her mind,’ the narrator says, ‘Maybe there is someplace else for us to go?’ And as the moment stretches, tautens, becomes unbearable, the narrator escapes by imagining lifting the bonnet of the car, and beginning to disassemble its engine: “When you put your mind in the engine some of what your body is saying – about being too hot, wanting a drink, needing to cry – can be turned down for a while. The manual can be relied upon. It is the same each time you open it. The same parts, the same hands. One exploded view sits next to another. No breath. No noise. No lies.”
In a way, Tiffany is also exploding the notion of a family is. Each family member is atomized and disconnected from each other. The adults do not protect the children. The siblings do not interact except in covert acts like sneaking icecream from the fridge. The narrator is mute. “Relationships between parents and children are tense with carefully elided violence.” Tiffany has explained in some interviews that the novel draws on her own family life to some extent. “Recently, Tiffany went back to Perth with her brother, and they walked around the area where they had grown up. "I told him about some of my shoplifting, and he told me about some of his shoplifting. But at the time, we didn't tell each other. It was funny to learn about this in our 50s. If we'd worked together at the time, we could have pulled off some major heists." (https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...)
In the second section of the novel, they undertake a road trip to the eastern seaboard of Australia – eight days driving there (and sleeping in the car), three days of holiday and another eight days across the Nullabor. It enables Tiffany to heighten the sense of oppression and disconnection. The narrator notes: “'A car is the ideal container for a family. You can be always going to a better place and it keeps everyone stamped down neatly in their seats.”
What lifts the novel from being entirely depressing is the agency of the girl, who slips out of the deadlocked house at night, steels cars and joyrides. She also commits small acts of sabotage on her stepfather’s work as a mechanic, putting feathers in engines, burying small engine parts, stealing the pincers that he uses to hurt her brother. Its utterly, utterly believable.
The prose is very, very sparse. There is virtually no dialogue. The voice of the girl is matter-of-fact but there is a spare kind of poetry in what she says. For example: “The dirt and the stones make room for the part and fit back together again much like before. If you don’t look at what you are doing, if you do everything by feel, there are no witnesses. There’s the stain on you but that can be cleaned away, and then the only thing that’s left is what you felt. And in comparing engines to bodies: “The place where a part connects is specially prepared with a housing, a thread or a flange. One true surface against another. It’s not possible for the parts of the body to fit together like this. There’s skin and there’s the flesh under it. The flesh, the meat of the body, isn’t stable. There are three lines cut into the middle of father man’s belt.”
This excellent review really sums it up – and is worth a read for things that I haven’t acknowledged like a discussion about use of second person, and of the connection between gender, the idea of smallness and of self-objectification. “What’s most remarkable about Exploded View, though, is its tension: very little actually happens, and even less is said, because it is a book about inertia, about silence. About the fierce interiority of adolescence and what is unspeakable in trauma and in violence.” (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/explo...)
This novel features an unnamed teenage girl as narrator, with her mother, stepfather and brother forming the kernel of the narrative. The novel is set in 1970s Western Australia. The stepfather runs an unlicensed garage on the property and the ‘exploded view’ of the title refers to the kinds of diagrams you find in car manuals – technical drawings of the inner workings of a motor showing each granular, separated piece in interaction or relationship with the next.
The girl understands engines and how they fit together. The predictability, the containment of the engine and its functioning stand in contrast to the lack of power that she feels in relation to her family, especially her stepfather whose unseen menace towards her is always present. He bullies the entire family; there’s a scene where the mother and children sit in the car looking at their house; It’s a moment of stillness, but also, briefly, of possibility – ‘She could always change her mind,’ the narrator says, ‘Maybe there is someplace else for us to go?’ And as the moment stretches, tautens, becomes unbearable, the narrator escapes by imagining lifting the bonnet of the car, and beginning to disassemble its engine: “When you put your mind in the engine some of what your body is saying – about being too hot, wanting a drink, needing to cry – can be turned down for a while. The manual can be relied upon. It is the same each time you open it. The same parts, the same hands. One exploded view sits next to another. No breath. No noise. No lies.”
In a way, Tiffany is also exploding the notion of a family is. Each family member is atomized and disconnected from each other. The adults do not protect the children. The siblings do not interact except in covert acts like sneaking icecream from the fridge. The narrator is mute. “Relationships between parents and children are tense with carefully elided violence.” Tiffany has explained in some interviews that the novel draws on her own family life to some extent. “Recently, Tiffany went back to Perth with her brother, and they walked around the area where they had grown up. "I told him about some of my shoplifting, and he told me about some of his shoplifting. But at the time, we didn't tell each other. It was funny to learn about this in our 50s. If we'd worked together at the time, we could have pulled off some major heists." (https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...)
In the second section of the novel, they undertake a road trip to the eastern seaboard of Australia – eight days driving there (and sleeping in the car), three days of holiday and another eight days across the Nullabor. It enables Tiffany to heighten the sense of oppression and disconnection. The narrator notes: “'A car is the ideal container for a family. You can be always going to a better place and it keeps everyone stamped down neatly in their seats.”
What lifts the novel from being entirely depressing is the agency of the girl, who slips out of the deadlocked house at night, steels cars and joyrides. She also commits small acts of sabotage on her stepfather’s work as a mechanic, putting feathers in engines, burying small engine parts, stealing the pincers that he uses to hurt her brother. Its utterly, utterly believable.
The prose is very, very sparse. There is virtually no dialogue. The voice of the girl is matter-of-fact but there is a spare kind of poetry in what she says. For example: “The dirt and the stones make room for the part and fit back together again much like before. If you don’t look at what you are doing, if you do everything by feel, there are no witnesses. There’s the stain on you but that can be cleaned away, and then the only thing that’s left is what you felt. And in comparing engines to bodies: “The place where a part connects is specially prepared with a housing, a thread or a flange. One true surface against another. It’s not possible for the parts of the body to fit together like this. There’s skin and there’s the flesh under it. The flesh, the meat of the body, isn’t stable. There are three lines cut into the middle of father man’s belt.”
This excellent review really sums it up – and is worth a read for things that I haven’t acknowledged like a discussion about use of second person, and of the connection between gender, the idea of smallness and of self-objectification. “What’s most remarkable about Exploded View, though, is its tension: very little actually happens, and even less is said, because it is a book about inertia, about silence. About the fierce interiority of adolescence and what is unspeakable in trauma and in violence.” (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/explo...)
August 31, 2020
The writing was visceral, urgent and confronting. It almost felt as if it were so well written that the extent of the text went over my head and I perhaps didn't entirely grasp the concept of the structure. A marvelous piece of writing regardless of my struggle with it.
September 10, 2019
Here is a gripping first-person narrative, detailing a teenage girl's ugly and frightening premature encounter with adulthood. She seeks refuge in the photographs and schematics of a car maintenance manual, but it isn't enough to arrest or un-break what has already started fracturing.
Carrie Tiffany has coloured within the lines she set herself, within the minimalist, almost naive approach to the telling of this story. Her ability to see the world through her eyes is first-rate; it is easy for the reader to imagine how coarse and unforgiving it is. Tiffany's description of the Australian landscape, the sights and sounds of this place, drew up exactly these things. In it, the lives of all play out in a carefully controlled burn, the reader never quite sure if they are at the crest of the climax.
Carrie Tiffany has coloured within the lines she set herself, within the minimalist, almost naive approach to the telling of this story. Her ability to see the world through her eyes is first-rate; it is easy for the reader to imagine how coarse and unforgiving it is. Tiffany's description of the Australian landscape, the sights and sounds of this place, drew up exactly these things. In it, the lives of all play out in a carefully controlled burn, the reader never quite sure if they are at the crest of the climax.
December 8, 2019
Tiffany’s writing is wonderfully spare and tightly-controlled.
Akin to the style of my favourite author, Helen Garner, it draws the reader into a tightly-bound web of personal observation and devastating honesty, yet still only allowing an occasional glimpse into the possibilities which lie beyond the printed page.
This really delivers as an emotional tour-de-force of creative writing. Most importantly, unlike too many present-day endeavours, it never succumbs to morbid self-indulgence or unnecessary detail. Tiffany not only understands her craft, but utilises a wonderful blend of sensory experience to enhance her writing.
Akin to the style of my favourite author, Helen Garner, it draws the reader into a tightly-bound web of personal observation and devastating honesty, yet still only allowing an occasional glimpse into the possibilities which lie beyond the printed page.
This really delivers as an emotional tour-de-force of creative writing. Most importantly, unlike too many present-day endeavours, it never succumbs to morbid self-indulgence or unnecessary detail. Tiffany not only understands her craft, but utilises a wonderful blend of sensory experience to enhance her writing.
August 17, 2020
Short listed for the 2020 Australian Miles Franklin Literary Award. This work is made up of fragmented moments, flashes of events in a young girl's life in a nameless country town with her family. Details range from fully fleshed to short, one or two line single images . It is disconcerting to read but captures well the sense of a young mind grappling with a life that is desperately lonely and suffocatingly claustrophobic. Clues are left between more detailed sections where she describes things that she did and the activities of the people around her. The clues are brief and lack detail but leap out from the pages, jarring and giving sudden glimpses of things so ugly that she was unable to give them voice, instead drifting over them as if saying it out loud would destroy her. It is unrelentingly bleak but brilliantly written and deeply haunting. A book to enjoy for the skill of the writing.
May 25, 2020
This is a novel to be admired, but not enjoyed. It is a poetic novel, but not a lyrical one. Rather, Tiffany recreated with astounding skill the sad and dark world of an unnamed twelve-year old girl who suffered constant abuse from “Father man”, the depraved mechanic who had moved in with and perpetrated abuse on her family.
The wording of the novel was minimal, expressing the sexual and physical abuse suffered in the subtleties of the author’s language and viewed through the perspective of the child, who remained silent. Yet, through the child’s “escape” into the mechanics of the Holden he cherished and the repair manual that set out the “exploded view” of how each part fit into the whole, the victim looked to sabotage him. However, I found it hard to comprehend the overload of mechanical details, both in regard to my ignorance about how cars work and because I sometimes struggled to understand why the child was so mystified by the Holden repair manual, which was like her Bible. Was it that it provided her with a sense that at least mechanically, life could be controlled?
I read the novel in one sitting (under 200 pages) as both the absence of chapters and the controlled, but almost random narrative of thought did not allow me convenient places to pause, then to pick up the flow of what I had read. The impact of this child’s abuse and of the conclusion of the novel were heightened, I believe, by my having read it without a break. Having now read Tiffany’s "The Mateship of Birds" and "Exploded View", I see her as a novelist writing poetry, or perhaps a poet writing a novel. In any case, her writing is innovative and certainly bends the conventions of both genres.
The wording of the novel was minimal, expressing the sexual and physical abuse suffered in the subtleties of the author’s language and viewed through the perspective of the child, who remained silent. Yet, through the child’s “escape” into the mechanics of the Holden he cherished and the repair manual that set out the “exploded view” of how each part fit into the whole, the victim looked to sabotage him. However, I found it hard to comprehend the overload of mechanical details, both in regard to my ignorance about how cars work and because I sometimes struggled to understand why the child was so mystified by the Holden repair manual, which was like her Bible. Was it that it provided her with a sense that at least mechanically, life could be controlled?
I read the novel in one sitting (under 200 pages) as both the absence of chapters and the controlled, but almost random narrative of thought did not allow me convenient places to pause, then to pick up the flow of what I had read. The impact of this child’s abuse and of the conclusion of the novel were heightened, I believe, by my having read it without a break. Having now read Tiffany’s "The Mateship of Birds" and "Exploded View", I see her as a novelist writing poetry, or perhaps a poet writing a novel. In any case, her writing is innovative and certainly bends the conventions of both genres.
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