Good Oil – Laura Buzo

Good Oil
Laura Buzo
Allen & Unwin
2010, 283p
Read from my local library

Miss Amelia Hayes, welcome to the Land of Dreams. I am the staff trainer. I will call you grasshopper and you will call me sensei and I will give you the good oil. Right?

Amelia Hayes is a couple of months off 15 and has just started her first casual job as a “check out chick” at her local Woolworths, one of the two major Australian supermarket chains. She is trained on the job by Chris Harvey, a 21 year old Woolies veteran who works part time whilst completing his degree of a Bachelor of Arts and Social Science. Amelia develops a crush on Chris almost immediately – she’s an awkward kind of girl who doesn’t make friends easily. Chris is the only person she really connects with at work and he stops her from being a total outcast on the job. They discover that they have things in common, despite their 6 year gap.

Before long, Chris and Amelia are talking about everything. Chris is extraordinarily well read and he often spots Amelia reading school texts before work and during her breaks and engages her in conversation about them and recommends other books for her to read. They talk books, they talk deep issues with Second Wave feminism and they talk about what they hate, what happens in their lives that affects them, what makes them tick. Chris is half-hearted in his pursuit of Kathy from Woolworths and Amelia is a tortured bystander every time he suffers a relapse of the Kathy disease. All she wants is for Chris to notice her, but she’s barely fifteen and he’s heading for 22 and finishing his masters at uni. Their lives are a world apart.

Chris is noticing Amelia more with every conversation they have. He is suffering from true heartbreak and Amelia, one of his “New Littles” is a bright spot in his day as he finds her far more intelligent and interesting to talk to than any of the others he’s been required to train recently. But no matter how smart she is, no matter how funny, no matter how much she rants over the ending of Great Expectations, nothing changes the fact that Amelia is still only fifteen.

Good Oil is the first novel by Australian author Laura Buzo. I have Laura’s second novel, Holier Than Thou on my shelf but I’d heard such fabulous things about this one that when I spotted it on the display shelf of my local library recently I picked it up on a whim. I’ve been gutted by hay fever recently and I’ve spent a lot of time just sacked out on the couch reading because that’s all I can really find the energy to do. Even review writing was beyond my capabilities until my medications finally managed to kick in and I’ve begun to get better. So I picked this up last Saturday night, intending to read a few pages before bed. I finished it at 12.30am, a couple of hours later.

In New South Wales, Australia you need to be 14 and 9 months to get a job and Amelia begins looking immediately, excited about the prospect of having her own money. She is hired by her local Woolworths and becomes a check out operator, working a couple of nights a week and usually one weekend shift. She’s not ‘in’ with the crowd at her work, she doesn’t really know how to talk to most people, she doesn’t flirt and she doesn’t dress up or wear make up or do her hair. So she doesn’t really fit in and the only person she really talks to is Chris, the guy who trained her. They establish a friendship based around literature and studies that gradually grows to encompass their past heartbreaks (Chris) and a less-than-appealing homelife (Amelia). They even begin writing each other letters, sharing thoughts and feelings. Amelia’s crush is swift and deep but she knows the odds are not in her favour.

This book is so beautiful. It’s funny and sweet and clever. Buzo paints an interesting environment, easily subdividing the workers into groups and giving us Amelia on the outside looking in, an observer to the life and times of the casual Woolworths staff. Amelia works on a simple school-worth-study routine, escaping the oppressive atmosphere that has settled in her house courtesy of a father that is often away working but doesn’t lift a finger when he’s home, and a mother who works full time and still handles 100% of the household duties as well. Amelia’s sister has moved away to uni and as with work, she feels alone at home. Everything she does seems to be wrong and she’s so angry about things. In Chris, Amelia finds someone that she can rant to who will appreciate it, will cheer her on as she attacks the latest classic she’s read or analyses the fact that women who can now ‘have it all’ thanks to feminism are being royally screwed over by a classic domestic cycle that hasn’t adjusted to reflect the changing ways of the world.

Some mild **SPOILERS** ahead:

You know that this book isn’t going to end in a certain way. Chris is nearly 22, finishing his masters and Amelia is 15 and still in year 10 at school. As Chris says, they are in completely different points in their lives. He needs an equal, someone who can socialise with him, someone who he can be with fully (without breaking a law). In a few years time, that 6 years will be nothing. But right now, the age gap might as well be the size of the Grand Canyon. Despite their feelings. This is so brilliantly handled! You know Amelia’s feelings from the get-go but Chris’s are different, slower and less obvious. As a 16yo who dated a 21yo, I’m glad that Buzo chose to give this book the ending she did. Chris is portrayed throughout the whole book in a certain way – a good person, someone who is considerate, capable of deep love and also deep pain. For it to end any other way I think wouldn’t be true to his character, no matter how willing Amelia may have been. He is right – they are at such different points in their lives, he is ready to step out into the world, get a job, travel. He spends a lot of time in pubs and bars, but it isn’t just the legal drinking age that creates a distance. It’s the social circle constructed around it as well. Amelia wouldn’t be able to feel at ease with his friends and chances are, they would have been uncomfortable with her being around too. And likewise, Chris would be unable to relate to all of Amelia’s friends.

Endeth the **spoilers**.

In Chris and Amelia (we get both sides of the story through a dual narration) we have two infinitely likable characters who are both struggling with where they are in life and how they fit in with what they want from it. Chris wants to delay the inevitable of assuming responsibility and getting a job and being an adult but he also wants to escape the fact that he’s a 21yo man who still lives at home with his parents and works at Woolworths. He laments the life of one of his close friends who, in the course of his narration, pulls his entire life together effortlessly in a short amount of time. Amelia wants to be just that little bit older, maybe eighteen, someone who can drive, go to the pub, isn’t tied down by parents and school, who can interact and be with Chris as an emotional and social equal.

I would adore a sequel to this book. Buzo wrote Holier Than Thou which I now cannot wait to read but I’d really love to see these two characters connect again later on. I think their story has a lot that remained untold in this book.

9/10

Book #243 of 2012

Good Oil is the 78th novel read and reviewed for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012

In America (and perhaps the rest of the world) this book is published under the title of Love And Other Perishable Items. I’m not sure the slang term “good oil” extends to the rest of the world! I like the other title actually – I think it suits the book nicely!

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