That sounds downbeat, but it wasn’t entirely, because she had lived and learned.Īs a story, ‘My Brilliant Career’ is much like it’s heroine brilliant but infuriating. Sybylla’s story ended where it started – at Possum Gully. She tried to hold on but it was a struggle, and I think it would be fair to say that Sybylla was not cut out to be a governess. She pleaded to be rescued, but she was stuck there. In a place so much poorer and starker than Possum Gully. She still had insecurities, and she still wanted to be in charge of her own fate, and to dream her own dreams.īut Sybylla’s fate wasn’t in her own hands her father had taken out a loan and, in lieu of interest, he had given his daughter’s services as a governess. But she dithered, and as soon as anyone got to close she pushed them away. She might have married Harry Beecham, the owner of the neighbouring farm, who was well-off enough and indulgent enough to allow her the freedom to write her book. She might have gone to Sydney, to become a performer, guided by a family friend, lawyer Everard Grey. She blossomed, and her insecurity about her appearance and her disappointment with the world began to slip away.

Sybylla was in her element, with time to indulge her love for the arts and performing, and with an appreciative audience her grandmother, aunt and uncle were amused and entertained. It was a much bigger, much more prosperous farm, and it was much closer to society. In the end she decided to send Syblla to her own mother on the family farm. It was hardly surprising that Sybylla’s preoccupation with books, music and drama drove her poor mother to distraction. had tried to improve his family’s situation, but he gambled and lost. Her mother came from a good family and her father, a working man.

It was a hard life you were either working or you were sleeping there was nothing else. That’s not easy when you’re the daughter of a poor farmer from Possum Gully. She’s maddening andshe’s utterly charming …īut the most important thing about Sybylla, the thing that she doesn’t ever quite say, is that she wants to set her own path in life, to be mistress of her own destiny. She’s also nearly impossible to explain a curious mixture of confidence and insecurity, tactlessness and sensitivity, forthrightness and thoughtfulness …. If you took equal amounts of Becky Sharp, Cassandra Mortmain and Angel Devereaux, if you mixed them together, with verve and brio, and you might achieve a similar result, but you wouldn’t quite get there, because Sybylla Melvyn is a true one-off. In 1901 a remarkable heroine made her debut, in a book that purports to be her autobiography.

My brilliant career book review