Holier Than Thou in Aussie Readers

Apr 30, 2012 Bree T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian, contemporary, aww2012

Holly Yarkov is at life-changing stage. She’s moving in with her amazing boyfriend Tim, who is like a gift from the Universe. She’s graduated from university, she has scored herself a job working in mental health, which she finds fulfilling even as she’s finding it draining. They’re the story of every government department – underfunded and understaffed. She also has a crazy appealing co-worker who supports her in every way possible, both at work and out of it.

But even though she is moving forwa Holly Yarkov is at life-changing stage. She’s moving in with her amazing boyfriend Tim, who is like a gift from the Universe. She’s graduated from university, she has scored herself a job working in mental health, which she finds fulfilling even as she’s finding it draining. They’re the story of every government department – underfunded and understaffed. She also has a crazy appealing co-worker who supports her in every way possible, both at work and out of it.

But even though she is moving forward with her life, the events of the past still haunt her, such as the death of her father when she was a teenager in high school and the amazing friendship-turned-crush-turned-something she had with a boy, now a man, who has slowly withdrawn from their group of friends until he cut off all contact, moving away to a new job. Holly can’t let it go, she tries to find new ways to contact him, even though he has made it clear that he has moved on. And even though she has the wonderful Tim, she finds her thoughts are with this other person quite often.

Holier Than Thou is a book dealing with adults who are on the cusp of ‘real’ adulthood – they’re in their mid 20s, so they’ve graduated and got themselves proper, full time jobs. They’ve moving out of home, into apartments, and in Holly’s case, cohabiting with a partner for the first time. It’s a time of constant change, uncertainty and self-doubt. The novel is set in the inner-west of Sydney, Holly and her boyfriend Tim have just moved to Dulwich Hill and her co-worker Nick lives in nearby Marrickville. Both Holly and Nick work in the made-up suburb of Elizabethtown, known affectionately by the locals as “Befftown”, in government mental health. They have a string of regulars, patients that they visit to keep an eye on, see that they’re ok, taking their medication (and in some cases, administering it) and this novel opens with a punch, Holly and Nick dropping by one of these patients only to discover something horrific when they walk in the door.

Holly is also struggling with the concept of keeping her core group of friends together at a time where they are transitioning into new people. They’ve gone through primary school together, through high school and through university but now out in the big wide world, some of them are changing. Her idealist friend, who was always the one campaigning in school, has joined a big corporate firm where his job is to recommend companies fire hundreds of people. It’s such a far cry from the person Holly knows him to be that she wonders what has happened to him, what will happen to them all. It’s a position easy to sympathise with because I’m older than Holly and I’ve been through the stage she is going through, that stage post-university when everyone is moving away, doing different things, moving at different paces. I’ve been the one struggling to keep a friendship together when one of you now lives in a different state, when one of you is married with kids and the other is still drinking and partying like a high schooler just discovering alcohol. It’s a time that can make you feel like nothing is tethering you anymore and that if you look away for even a minute, these people who have been so important for so long, will be just gone.

I love the relationships and friendships in this novel, like Good Oil before it I feel that Buzo nails social interactions. Holly and Nick have such a fabulous working relationship and a very interesting personal relationship, there’s an attraction there, on both sides, not sure how long it has been in play with Nick but it seems to spring up out of nowhere for Holly and she’s bewildered by it. I think that it is definitely normal to be attracted to other people, on different levels, even when you’re in a relationship – after all, you’re not dead, just not actively looking. But it’s how the individual chooses to handle it that makes a big difference.

Holly is a character full of such depth, she was forced to grow up far too quickly when her father was diagnosed with a terminal illness when she was in her teens and helped care for him. Everyone told her that she was such a strength to her mother, she didn’t get those years to just relax and be a teenager that most people get. She’s never really dealt with her father’s death either, perhaps the effort of being so strong has too much for her to just relax and be able to grieve. She has likewise not dealt with the withdrawal from her life of Liam, who has chosen to cut off all contact with her. She still thinks of him constantly, she still tries to get in touch with him even though he’s made it clear he does not want that. She knows that her boyfriend Tim is a “gift from the universe” but at times she seems to take him a bit for granted.

I was shattered at the end of Good Oil, which finished a bit up-in-the-air and I was hoping for a sequel but after reading this book I think that just be how Buzo likes to end her novels. Leaving some things up to the reader to decide, even though that drives me nuts! I’m the sort of person that has to know everything! But even so, this book was utterly fabulous. Buzo writes with sensitivity and understanding of life issues and what it is to be trying to find yourself and keep everything together at the same time. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Apr 28, 2012 Lenni rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, avaliable-in-aus, 2012-must-have, must-have-aussie, i-ll-buy-anything-they-write, you-re-funny, above-5

So unbelievably real. And wonderful. So so wonderful.

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Holier than thou is one of those books.
You know the ones, the books that change you in some way.
One of those books that linger's and makes you contemplate your life and all the choices you've made.
One of those books that makes you laugh and cry and everything in between.
One of those books that you feel depicts your culture with utter perfection.
One of those books with character's that you just want ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

May 16, 2012 Penni Russon rated it really liked it

Fascinating in terms of genre alone, this is a YA novel with a distinctly YA arc about twenty-somethings who are all done with uni and are now out in the big bad world, but it's not everything they hoped it would be. I think it's really hard to write novels about twenty year olds because they don't have the same imposed restrictions on them as teenagers which makes them a little less interesting and it's a bit harder to end on a note of hope and optimism about the future, because the future is r ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

May 03, 2012 Lauredhel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian-women-writers-challenge, young-adult, contemporary

I loved this book. May there be more, much more Aussie YA that deals with early to mid twenties life, and in which people's jobs aren't a giant 9-5 blank space in the stories of their lives.

Content note for community health work (the MC's job) and all that it entails - suicidality, forcible hospitalisation, and so on. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2012 Lauren added it

Shelves: ya, 2012, library

Despite my best intentions (research, trips to the library, and lovely literary/non-fiction stacks toppling over under the bed) when I am sleepy and just want to read a few pages before bed, I pick up the 'light' choice. And last night, this was it.

I actually almost finished it in one go, maybe 50 pages left (but I can probably tell you what will happen in those pages). I like it because it is very Australian - I don't realise how American most of the books I read are until I read a distinct Aus ...more

1 like · Like · see review