Product Description

Harley Savage is a large, rawboned, plain person with a ragged haircut and a white t-shirt coming unstitched along the shoulder. Douglas Cheeseman is a big-eared man who avoids his own reflection, and has bored his wife into leaving him. They are not the usual suspects for a burgeoning romance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48345 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
Harley Savage with her 'dangerous streak' and Douglas Cheesman with his jug handle ears and vertigo both arrive in the little backwater of Karakarook. She is setting up the heritage museum while he is there to pull down the Bent Bridge, a local landmark. The Idea of Perfection tells the story of how these extraordinary characters, battered by past loves and scarred by life, find each other. Grenville, an Australian writer, vividly describes life in this rural New South Wales backwater. Her skilful touch effectively weaves the central narrative with a subplot that is both funny and tragic. The characters are well-drawn and empathetic, and the undercurrent themes of suppressed passion and sorrow engage the reader. This is a superb novel. (Kirkus UK)

Customer Reviews

My Idea of Perfection
I thought that The Secret River was a brilliant book, as was Lilian's Story, but, for me, this is the Kate Grenville I shall remember the best.
It is such an Australian story, in that it nails small town Australia -the look, the feel, the smell, the sounds -perfectly. There are laughs a plenty in many of the small town scenes. I defy anyone reading about the buying of the bucket not to chortle out loud. The central story and theme is universal, but it is Kate Grenville's skilful depictionThe characters (and that includes the poor Bank Manager's wife) are so sympathetically drawn, and their inner turmoils are described with memorable humour and pathos. It really did make me laugh, and then the final chapters describing the love between the two central couples as they all came to terms with their own ideas of perfection moved me to tears.

funny and sweet and oh so human
The reviewer who was bored with this book made me chuckle because she is, at least in part, right! There is no plot to speak of, and not a lot happens!

But, I don't agree about the lack of character formation. If this book is about anything at all, it is a beautifully painted portrait of small town rural Australia. The characters are wonderfully drawn - when shy, hesitant Douglas Cheeseman meets awkward and lacking-in-confidence Harley we wonder how they will ever manage even to communicate with each other, let alone establish a relationship! Minor characters include Felicity, a self-obsessed housewife who monitors her every action for its effect on her face, and even rations out her smiles so as to avoid creating wrinkles.

Although in real life Douglas and Harley would probably annoy me intensely - inept people bumbling through life - this book with its funny and sweet and oh, so human insights, left me rooting for them! I will certainly be reading more by this author.

The Idea of Perfection
Well, The Idea of Perfection, which won The Orange Prize in 2001, WAS a surprise. Having read Grenville's Booker 2006 shortlisted The Secret River a few weeks ago, I picked this up and was expecting more of the same - a historical, beautifully written, immaculately researched tale. The Secret River was gorgeously atmospheric with its detailed descriptions of the lush, wild landscape, and was very moving in its depiction of the struggles between the natives in Australia and the incoming convicts from the UK. It was, unsurprisingly and appropriately, light on laffs.
The Idea of Perfection is almost its polar opposite. It is a contemporary story, frequently very funny, and concentrates far more on the individual personalities of the characters than on any form of global picture of history.
But it is still a wonderfully intelligent book.
The tale follows gawky, socially gauche 55-year-old Sydney engineer Douglas Cheeseman's mission to knock down a condemned bridge in Karakarook, a tiny village in New South Wales with a population of 1374. He meets a 50-year-old woman who is also somewhat of an outsider, Harley Savage. Harley has come into Karakarook from the Applied Arts museum in Sydney to help set up a Heritage museum for the villagers. Both have plenty of ghosts. Douglas is haunted by his ex wife's constant reminders of how boring he is - and he really is, waxing lyrical about cement and bridge loads, but Grenville's sympathetic depiction ensures we see the good in him as well as laughing at his geekiness. Harley hails from a family of artists and, compared with her beautiful and talented younger sister, feels that she has never measured up, being large, ruddy-faced and plain, and lacking conventional artistic talent. She has three sons from three disastrous marriages and is adamant that she wants no more relationships.
Other characters in the village are painted with wicked dexterity, including a vain housewife obsessed with avoiding wrinkles.
The unfolding of events in the village is related with dramatic aplomb and large doses of humour. Grenville manages to imbue even cattle, sheep and dogs with personalities and her description of an awkward first date rivals Brent in The Office Xmas Special's for disastrous hilarity.
Most of all, this is a warm, accepting book that celebrates the right of 'odd' people to find happiness, and its sketching of imperfection approaches perfection. ****1/2