Jill Kerr Conway's mother, Mrs. Kerr depressed me. I thought it was sad that she had such a hard life, and I identified with her in many ways. Near the end of the book she seems to have given in to despair. She was much different before Coorain and before she had children. Who she was before all of the emotional baggage she acquired reminded me of my mother in a professional way. In the emotional way, she is nothing like my mother. I would be a completely different person if crying wasn't tolerated when I was growi

ng up. I was much too emotional to have dealt with that, and I can't understand how Jill Kerr Conway survived it. I became painfully aware of this when Jill is talking about being awakened one December morning by her father saying good-bye. Knowing something was wrong but unable to speak of this, she waited patiently with her brother, Barry, for word, and then finally found out at 6:00 p.m. that her father died mysteriously when he was supposedly working on extending piping into the Brooklins Dam. Jill's eyes began to fill with tears as her mother gave her this news, and her mother told her, "Your father wouldn't want you to cry." Later in the book Jill is awakened by a loud knocking on her front door; she finds a police officer there who informs her that her oldest brother, Robert, was in a car accident suffering severe head injuries and died in Penrith Hospital at 1:53 a.m. Again, Jill finds herself waiting, silently with her brother, Barry, this time for morning when their uncle would tell their mother.

I like Jill because she is strong, intelligent, and has an interesting perspective on life as the youngest and only girl, born in 1934, as the youngest and only girl. She didn't think she was pretty and her mother occasionally made unkind comments about her appearance. Jill was somewhat selfless; her mother wanted her to get an education she longed for, and be successful. Her father would go on talking about her future, one he clearly didn't expect to share. "Work hard, Jill," he'd say. "Don't be like your brothers. Don't just waste time. Make something of yourself.' And he would continue with, "Get a real education and get away from this damn country for good." Jill would promise she would even though she couldn't even imagine life away from Coorain and the very thought caused her to choke back tears. She hadn't cried when she saw sheep's rotting corpses or when her father died in December of 1944, because her mother told her that her father wouldn't want her to cry and she didn't, nor had she cried when her brother died. Her entire childhood, she was not allowed to express her emotions. When she was staying wi

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Approximate Word count = 1440
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)