My Brilliant Career in Never too Late to Read Classics

Feb 20, 2023 Chrissie rated it it was ok

Shelves: hf, classics, 2023-read, australia, returned, audible-uk, love

An Australian classic to be read with the GR group Never Too Late to Read Classics in March and April 2023.

We are reading books by two Australian female authors, both of whom chose to write under a male pseudonym, Henry Handel Richardson and Miles Franklin. I first read The Getting of Wisdom by Richardson followed now by Franklin's My Brilliant Career. One cannot help but compare the two. Both are semi-autobiographical and both take place at the turn of the 20th century. Both focus upon the girl An Australian classic to be read with the GR group Never Too Late to Read Classics in March and April 2023.

We are reading books by two Australian female authors, both of whom chose to write under a male pseudonym, Henry Handel Richardson and Miles Franklin. I first read The Getting of Wisdom by Richardson followed now by Franklin's My Brilliant Career. One cannot help but compare the two. Both are semi-autobiographical and both take place at the turn of the 20th century. Both focus upon the girls when they were in their teens. Both girls are strong-willed, but in different ways. The former is set in a girl's boarding school situated in Melbourne, the latter in New South Wales. I will speak here of Franklin's book. My review of Richardson's is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I prefer Richardson’s.

Sybylla is the central protagonist of My Brilliant Career It is appropriate to classify her as a feminist. She wants to escape from her family. She wants to write. She is determined to make something of herself. We become acquainted with her mother and father and siblings. Sybylla and her mother never see eye to eye. Her father has turned to drink. It is not hard to understand her need to escape the past and her urge to do something new with her life.

Nevertheless, I did not like her. She whines and complains incessantly. I find her terribly egotistic and selfish. When things are going good for her, she doesn’t think for a moment of how she might help those back home, here I am thinking particularly of her younger sister. Secondly, Sybylla's “fancy” words grate on me. A pinch of humility would have gone a long way. Since it is she who is telling us of her life, it is her words that set the style of the prose. For me the prose is stilted and unnatural. Prose is important to me, and I don’t like it here.

Being a teenager, Sybylla is interested in love and romance. She is ambivalent–one minute she wants passion and then recoils when it doesn’t live up to her dreams. Her flirtations annoyed me. The love thread in this story turned me off completely.

What saved this from a one-star book for me was the author’s descriptions of the land, flora and fauna. Richardson’s book, if I go back to comparing the two authors, has very little of this. I have never visited Australia and so I appreciate “seeing” the country through Franklins vivid depictions.

It's helpful to keep in mind that the title is to be interpreted ironically!

I listened to an audiobook version at Audible-UK. It is read by Megan Rees. Rees makes Sybylla’s words so darn flippant and light. Sybylla is intelligent and has a good vocabulary. The tone Rees uses for Sybylla is all wrong! The other characters’ words are spoken very differently. Basically, Rees’ narration is overdramatized. I had to keep telling myself to listen to the words, not the sound in my ears. Rees’s narration I have given one star.

I did not like this book. However, I do try to find positive things to say. I want my review to be fair and balanced. ...more

20 likes · Like · see review

Jun 19, 2025 Sara rated it liked it

Shelves: individuality, 20th-century-literature, classes, humor, australia

3.5, rounded down. Could almost as easily have rounded up.

Set in Australia during the late 1800’s, this book is a bit of a lark. I laughed at our “heroine” who thinks she is the ugliest and least desirable of girls and refuses to allow anyone to prove her wrong. Sybylla is a creature caught in the crossroads of circumstances of birth. Her mother is from a fairly wealthy, upper-class family. Her father is a bit of a ne’er-do-well, who has dragged his wife and children down into poverty.

When Sybyl ...more

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Apr 07, 2023 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: autobiography, fiction-20th-century, e-books, australian-fiction, gutenberg

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

This is my first book by Miles Franklin and I really liked it. It's sequel is My Career Goes Bung. ...more

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