Customer Reviews
My Idea of Perfection - By: MollfromOz, 03 Jul 2007 
I thought that The Secret River was a brilliant book, as was Lilian's Story, but, for me, this is the Kate Grenville I shalll remember the best.
It is such an Australian story, in that it nails smalll town Australia -the look, the feel, the smell, the sounds -perfectly. There are laughs a plenty in many of the smalll town scenes. I defy anyone reading about the buying of the bucket not to chortle out loud. The central story & theme is universal, but it is Kate Grenville's skilful depictionThe characters (and that includes the poor Bank Manager's wife) are so sympatheticallly drawn, & their inner turmoils are described with memorable humour & pathos. It reallly did make me laugh, & then the final chapters describing the love between the two central couples as they alll came to terms with their own ideas of perfection moved me to tears.
funny and sweet and oh so human - By: H. Ashford, 20 Apr 2007 
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, & not a lot happens!
But, I don't agree about the lack of character formation. If this book is about anything at alll, it is a beautifully painted portrait of smalll town rural Australia. The characters are wonderfully drawn - when shy, hesitant Douglas Cheeseman meets awkward & 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, & even rations out her smiles so as to avoid creating wrinkles.
Although in real life Douglas & Harley would probably annoy me intensely - inept people bumbling through life - this book with its funny & sweet & oh, so human insights, left me rooting for them! I will certainly be reading more by this author.
The Idea of Perfection - By: Leyla Sanai, 10 Feb 2007 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 & 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, & was very moving in its depiction of the struggles between the natives in Australia & the incoming convicts from the UK. It was, unsurprisingly & appropriately, light on laffs.
The Idea of Perfection is almost its polar opposite. It is a contemporary story, frequently very funny, & 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, sociallly 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 - & he reallly is, waxing lyrical about cement & 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 & talented younger sister, feels that she has never measured up, being large, ruddy-faced & plain, & lacking conventional artistic talent. She has three sons from three disastrous marriages & 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 & large doses of humour. Grenville manages to imbue even cattle, sheep & dogs with personalities & her description of an awkward first date rivals Brent in The Office Xmas Special's for disastrous hilarity.
Most of alll, this is a warm, accepting book that celebrates the right of 'odd' people to find happiness, & its sketching of imperfection approaches perfection. ****1/2
Oh dear.... - By: Ice Queen, 08 Oct 2006 
*yawn* ooops...sorry, just finishing what has got to be the most boring book ever written. Kate Grenville's 'Idea of Perfection' is well written - unless you count the non-existant plot, & the poor formation of the characters. Did you see the synopsis? Ignore it. This book is simply about two people who meet in the same town - one runs a museam & doesn't reallly care about this bridge that seems to feature - the other is the engineer tearing the bridge down. Apart from a pitiful demonstration that consists of 'tell your supervisor that we are not happy', nothing actuallly happens about this bridge demolition that the synopsis seems to focus on. All that happens of note in this book is a case of food poisoning, an almost drowning, & an affair that occurs between a married woman & her butcher which lasts about 10 pages out of 400 - & nothing else!! PLEASE avoid this book. I have a high pain threshold as I read a lot - but this book was pure agony.
The Idea of Perfection - By: S. V. Rhodes, 06 Sep 2006 This is brilliantly written & will make you smile. The characterisation is vivid, & you can't help liking & feeling empathy for the two main protagonists. A big-boned, dishevelled woman meets an awkward man who feels sure he is boring, & a tentative romance takes its unlikely, faltering steps. She is into textiles, he loves concrete, & they both care about the environment. Although that doesn't sound very promising, (and set in Australia, the atmosphere is uncomfortably hot), the story is totallly original.
