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Paddy O'Reilly

Autor(a) de The Fine Colour of Rust

11+ Works 168 Membros 13 Reviews

About the Author

Inclui os nomes: P.A. O'Reilly, P.A. O'Reilly

Obras de Paddy O'Reilly

Associated Works

The Best Australian Stories 2004 (2004) — Contribuinte — 32 cópias
The Best Australian Stories 2006 (2006) — Contribuinte — 31 cópias
The Best Australian Stories 2010 (2010) — Contribuinte — 22 cópias
The Best Australian Stories 2007 (2007) — Contribuinte — 22 cópias
The Best Australian Stories 2016 (2016) — Contribuinte — 17 cópias

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Paddy O'Reilly is the author of three unforgettable social novels: The Factory (2005); The Fine Colour of Rust (2012); and The Wonders (2014). Her new novel Other Houses features a couple living payday to payday as they try to transition from a life of poverty and addiction. Like Eliot Perlman's Three Dollars (1998) which—when we had no idea how bad it would get—depicted the vulnerability of people in the globalised economy, Paddy O'Reilly's novel shows how precarious life is for the working poor in the 21st century. Other Houses is the story of Lily and Janks, and Lily's obnoxious daughter Jewelee, an entitled teenager who is the catalyst for their loss of control over their situation.

When Lily meets Janks, she's a cashier at a supermarket and he's an addict. With a combination of wavering determination and luck, Janks gets a scarce place in rehab. When he's clean the couple make a fresh start. They move away from temptation from his 'mates', and he gets a dull job in a factory while she does cleaning because the flexible hours mean she can be home for Jewel. They live from payday to payday, just scraping by but determined that Jewel will have a different sort of life. They don't want her to be one of the working poor. They want her to have a career, and savings instead of debt.

Other Houses is a gritty novel about serious issues, but it's often playful. O'Reilly has fun depicting the kinds of houses that Lily and her friend Shannon clean, showing the financial and social gulf between those who are cleaners and those who can afford them.
Number 63 is a two-storey terrace, renovated, with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a formal lounge, large living area combined with kitchen and dining, and a laundry and sun porch leading to the garden.

We hate this house because of chrome. Chrome and leather furniture, chrome handrails on the stairs, chrome kitchen stools, chrome and glass coffee table, side table, nest of occasional tables. Two small children whose splayed sticky handprints can be found even on the underside of the chrome frames of the chairs. Some tiny handprints are identifiably oatmeal, some butter, some we suspect are dried poo. The metal isn't properly finished and every fortnight I half-expect to find blood from a sliced finger. Shannon calls it the House of Hands. The lady of the House of Hands leaves us two mugs, two teabags and four Aldi shortbread biscuits on her toddler-handprinted kitchen counter like a present for Santa. It seems she is saying relax, I don't think of you as my employees, but every few months she sends an email to Hector, our boss, querying the amount of time we take to clean her property. (p.26)

They also clean the Horror House, the House of Doom, Lady Accountant, the Webber (with spiders), the Special Occasion House and the Portaloo.

The family is on the margins and the rent is a struggle, but now they live in gentrified Northcote. So when Jewelee, who is surely the nastiest teenager ever depicted in fiction, has a school trip to Greece, it triggers a desperate quest for the money to pay for it.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/04/03/other-houses-by-paddy-oreilly-and-a-shout-ou...
… (mais)
 
Marcado
anzlitlovers | Apr 2, 2022 |
Loretta describes herself disparagingly as "an old scrag" at all of thirty. Don't believe a word of it. She is a fierce, funny fighter, living in a tiny Australian town which is short of jobs, services and husbands. After 10 years of marriage her husband drove off and never came back.

I really enjoyed this story of a woman fighting to save the local school and other services in the town, standing up for what she believes in and trying to resist the slide into total cynicism and apathy. I'd hate to live in Gunapan, but I'd love to meet Loretta, her kids, and her friend Norm who owns the junkyard.

Reviewed for Amazon Vine January 2012
… (mais)
½
 
Marcado
elkiedee | outras 6 resenhas | Feb 15, 2021 |
(6.5) I picked this up for a light and easy read and that it is. It reminds me of Bridget Jones meets Erin Brockovich. A crusading solo mother of two children who dreams of escaping her life in a beemer or on the back of a Harley. None the less she loves her kids and her close friends and throws her all into saving the local school from closure and discovering who is behind the new development which threatens the town water supply,
 
Marcado
HelenBaker | outras 6 resenhas | Nov 14, 2017 |
Engaging collection of short stories about people or events that happen to the side of “ordinary” life, as suggested by the title. For my full review, please see: http://whisperinggums.com/2015/10/04/paddy-oreilly-peripheral-vision-stories-rev...
 
Marcado
minerva2607 | Mar 14, 2016 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
11
Also by
5
Membros
168
Popularidade
#126,679
Avaliação
3.9
Resenhas
13
ISBNs
39

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