Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living / Carrie Tiffany

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
by Carrie Tiffany

fiction

copyright 2005
read in July 2013

rated 7/10: well worth reading

There's a message here: good science is not enough to overcome basic stupidity.

I was worried that the message would be, that science is evil. Really, though, science is simply powerless. Powerless against drought, disease, plague and poor soil.

Why are farmers even on the Mallee country ? Because they are stupid enough to believe that they can force crops to grow from dry sand. And naive enough to believe government promises. And innocent enough to invest their lives with sellers of financial snake oil.

This is a story of people who work hard -- and lose. Yet they do it... not with good grace... but with good will. They offer a weak cup of tea to a neighbour, even as their own lives crash down around them.

There is bitterness but there is understanding. There is hopelessness but there is hope. Hope that the future will be less bleak. Or, at least, acceptance of life as it is.

Perhaps, though, it is simply a case of characters drawn so lightly that we don't really care... We feel for the situation but not so much for the individuals.

Still...

I read the book and thought -- not for the first time -- that we, humans, spend a lot of time destroying the natural environment. And that organised stupidity causes endless individual heartbreak.

Is that the message ? That the rich and powerful -- in their efforts for more riches and more power, or simply by their decisions based on ignorance -- destroy the lives of the weak and poor.

Yet, at the end, the protagonist -- the narrator -- gets on with her life. She plans for the future. A poor future, but one with hope rather than well-earned despair.

Never give up ! That's the message that I choose to take away with me. Never give up. And don't blindly follow either experts or politicians.

And always get a lawyer to read a contract before you sell your future crop to a snake-oil salesman...

A good book with a good message. An easy read but not a comforting read. A sad ending but with hope for the future... for the future of the narrator, at least.

This is not at all my usual sort of book. I'm not sure why I picked it off the shelves. But I am glad that I did.

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