My Brilliant Career

Not a book for romantics - nothing is romanticised, not the past, rural life, love or marriage. The protagonist is prickly and contrary and at times you want to slap her, but she sticks to her principles and I really liked her.

I loved the book despite wanting to shake Sybylla at times! Franklin did a masterful job of evoking atmosphere. It was so easy to get lost in the book. Sybylla was one of the most complex characters I've ever read from that period. There was nothing cliche with the plot or the characters and I was left to wonder what direction the novel would take through the very last page. The only downside was that the main character was so down on herself for being "ugly." But the dichotomy of that brutal self-appraisal and the fierce pride and independence of spirit placed her among the most interesting and memorable female characters that I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

My Brilliant Career is sort of what would happen if Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and the Australian outback and first-wave feminism had a baby.

Miles Franklin, though. Stella Marie Sarah Miles Franklin. She struggled for so long to get this book published - it was a success of sorts in the end, but she was so sick of it, she took it off the market and wanted it published again only after she died.

I wasn't ready to warm to this book - it's quite thick, and I had to read it for a course. But I loved it. It grew on me. Sybylla is a headstrong heroine who can be a little bit irritating, but after a while, I had only absolute affection towards her.

This book, written when Franklin was only a teenager, is a beautiful masterpiece. It's show more full of early feminist thought and ideas, and although I don't like all the parts of the book, together, as a whole, I love it.

I love the descriptions of the landscape, the stark sunrises, the ring-barked trees.

This book, in all its humble existence, is one of the unsung heroes of early Australian literature and feminism. I'll continue to be its champion till the day I die.

Doesn't matter if you don't love this book, Stella Marie Miles Franklin, because I do. show less

Franklin's narrator Sybylla Melvyn promises right at the start that she's not gonna spend a lot of time mooning over sunsets--a promise that she spectacularly fails to fulfill, and indeed she ends the novel on a sunset. It's a major clue that all is not as simple as it seems with her romantic longing, protofeminist righteousness, and disgusting class snobbery--or more specifically, that while Franklin herself probably agrees with all those things, she also recognizes that they are poison to the soul when combined with the anger of the frustrated solipsist--in other words, that the confines of 19th-century Australian bush society don't do Sybylla's chances in--she does it to herself. An important early book in Aussie lit, as I understand show more it, affecting in parts and maddening in others, and a good conventional frustrated-young-woman realist buldungsroman only with larrikins and jackeroos and dingos and suchlike. show less

Written by Franklin at the tender age of 16 (16 for goodness' sake!), My Brilliant Career is the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a young woman growing up in the Australian bush. Her father, once a successful horse breeder, makes bad business decisions and ends up a drunk; her mother is struggling to cope with her husband and eight children. Sybylla dreams of a better life, one full of culture and intellectual conversation, and rejoices when she is invited to live with her more wealthy grandmother where she can read and play the piano.

Sybylla is a very unsympathetic heroine. She's self-absorbed, snobbish and melodramatic. She can be full of self-pity and is obsessed with her ugliness (as she perceives her appearance) and is a bit prone to show more martyrdom. Sybylla's life is full of the dramatic ups and downs of adolescence but she has very clear opinions about marriage and the role of women in Australian society. I think it is these characteristics that draw the reader in and make you want to find out what happens to her.

As might be expected from a novel written by a 16 year old, the writing style is much like Sybylla herself - often melodramatic and overblown - but I think this makes the first person narrative feel entirely authentic show less

This coming-of-age story is distinguished by a number of factors – the setting in Australia, the often shallow, capricious and blithe narrator and the author’s refreshing voice. Sybylla Melvyn is the high-spirited, intelligent, pleasure-loving daughter of a cultured mother and a well-loved father. However, when they sell their acres and move to Possum Gully, things take a turn for the worse as the farming is poor, the weather intolerable and the intellectual environment nonexistent. Sybylla’s father takes to drinking and the family is soon mired in poverty.

Things look up when Sybylla goes to live with her grandmother, aunt and uncle. Finally, she has likeminded and kind people to talk to and none of the drudgery at home. Sybylla show more can be annoying in a selfish, overdramatic kind of way, but she is just a teenager and one who has lived in soul-crushing circumstances. The book created a scandal when it came out in 1901 and there was much speculation about the autobiographical elements. Multiple characters fall in love with Sybylla, which can be clichéd or too much of a wish-fulfillment plot element, but the narrative finally ends up following only one quite unconventional romance. There’s also not the predicted blissful wedding at the end.

Probably the best thing about the book is Sybylla’s first person voice – it’s fresh and funny and immediate which makes it all the more impressive that Franklin wrote it when she was 16. The setting, in the Australian backwoods, also provides a nice contrast to the usual coming-of-age, genteel romance plots – the backbreaking work at Possum Gully is given a vivid and depressing life, transients regularly stop by even the nicest homes and the dusty open country is palpable. Sybylla, though, can still find romance in the countryside, even at Possum Gully. show less

An Australian friend says this book is an Aussie version of Jane Austen I will have to concur because I haven't lived in Australia and she has. It is much grittier than Jane Austen's work though and I suspect Jane would have collapsed into a dead faint if she had been forced to governess the M'Swat children. I suspect that Sybylla and Susanna Moodie (who wrote Roughing it in the Bush about pioneering in Canada) would have had a lot in common though.

I was rather miffed with Sybylla though for not trying to help her family who desperately needed assistance. Being a governess to the M'Swats was forced upon her by her mother but she surely could have found another situation if she had really wanted to. And her treatment of Harry Beecham show more was quite awful. She agreed to become engaged and wear his ring and then she threw it in his face when he got angry with her for flirting and then she decided she would become secretly engaged but not marry until she was 21. Then when he lost his fortune she promised she would wait for him and it didn't matter that he was poor but when he regained his fortune she said she didn't want to marry him. No wonder Harry left Australia and went travelling over the world! It's a wonder he didn't take up strong drink and gambling as well.

However, it does have "loads of Australian scenery" and makes me long (again) to visit Australia even if it doesn't look the way Miles Franklin described it. Someday, I'll get there. show less