Guitar Highway Rose

Guitar Highway Rose by Brigid Lowry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I WISH this were my favorite quote from the book:

Some ideas are not born of logic and good sense. They are made of clouds and cobwebs. They sprout from nowhere and feed on excitement, sprinkled with adventure-juice and the sweet flavour of the forbidden. The psyche moves from the realms of the ordinary and takes a delicate step towards the territories of the unknown. We know that we shouldn't and that is exactly what we do.

However. Unfortunately.

It is this:

Sometimes you think you know where you're headed. You think you know what each day will bring you. You think there will be a breath to follow this breath. It has always been that way before. You think that lunch will follow breakfast and sometime later dinner will naturally appear. You think you know that the sky is blue and the trees are green, that cats are furry and that life will go on smoothly forever like an infinite ripple of turquoise ribbon. But sometimes you are wrong.

This is to say that I might be a tad too old for this book.

It's good, don't get me wrong, and I completely understand all those 5 and 4 stars reviews.

It is perfect for teens, 14 to 16/17 y.o., I'd say.

It is perfectly appropriate for adults who have read this book in their teens and are feeling nostalgic.

It is a celebration of striving to leave the parents' nest and become your own person/identity/personality.

It is a book about fathers/mothers and children and cutting the umbilical chord.

It is a book about a roadtrip.

It is a truly Australian book.

Too bad I related more to Rosie's mother than to Rosie.

Too bad I didn't much care for the stream-of-consciousness format, or the experimental style with lists and doodles and continuous switching of point of views.

What I am trying to say is that this book is far, far from being bad and it would have been perfect for a younger me. *sigh*



Younger teens will surely love it, a mix of rebellion, angst, romance, adventure, a swoonworthy guy and hippies.

And actually, my favorite passage is this:

Dear Asher, 

[...] Grandpa and I are both well except for his new choppers. They look quite good but they don't fit properly. About three times a day I find him out in the shed rasping away at them with a file. He has to see the dentist again next week, if he has any plate left. He is persevering but I wouldn't be surprised to find the teeth shoved in the drawer one day soon.



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