Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living

by Carrie Tiffany

It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. Amid billowing clouds of dust and information, the government ‘Better Farming Train’ slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing expert advice to those living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science is the key to successful farming, and that productivity is patriotic. In the swaying cars an unlikely love affair occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism, they marry and settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that a scientific approach to cultivation can transform the land. But after seasons of failing crops, and with a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have inadvertently destroyed, and the impact of their actions on an ancient and fragile landscape. Shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel vividly captures the hope and the disappointment of the era when it was possible to believe in the perfectibility of both nature and humankind. 'Beautifully written . . . kindly, sometimes hilarious and ultimately very sad' Times Literary Supplement 'A peach of a first novel by a writer with a deep understanding of relationships and the outside pressures that wear away the good soil' Sunday Times

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Australia, Book Club, Novels, Literature, 21st Century

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Carrie Tiffany was born in 1965 in Halifax, West Yorkshire and migrated to Australia with her family in the early 1970s. She grew up in Perth, Western Australia. In her early twenties she worked as a park ranger in Central Australia.
She moved to Melbourne in 1988 where she began work as a writer, focusing mainly on agriculture. Tiffany took up writing fiction and completed a creative writing course. She completed a master's degree in Creative Writing at RMIT University and is working towards her doctorate at La Trobe University.

Tiffany's debut novel, "Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living", was a remarkable success on its release in 2005, winning several awards and shortlisted for some major awards, including the Miles Franklin Award and the Orange Prize.
Her second novel, "Mateship with Birds (which takes its title from the 1922 book of the same name by ornithologist Alec Chisholm), was published in 2012.

Reviews

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best books you've never heard of. It came to my attention via my editor, who is also Carrie Tiffany's editor. The book won accolades and awards throughout the Commonwealth, but never quite found an audience in the US.

The story takes place in rural Australia in the 1930s. I picked up the book during a time when I was having trouble finishing books, my mind just wasn't getting traction anywhere. This one drew me in immediately, and I read it in a few days. When a novel which is set in a place and time that has absolutely nothing to do with you can draw you in like that, the writer immediately has my admiration.

I'd put this in a loose category I have in my mind called "Novels featuring female protagonists who are emotionally remote." If this is a genre you enjoy, or even try to write, I'd highly recommend this one. If you liked Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping," I think you'd like this one. It is strange, lovely, and sad; you'll never forget it.

[✨ jami ✨]

was rated as having one of the worst sex scenes in a book, ever. I can confirm it was pretty nasty tho not the worst I've ever read. However, I did spend a large portion of the book after the scene thinking about how bad the MC's yeast infection must be

that aside, I just found this too boring to finish? Or maybe I'm just not smart enough to appreciate it. Who knows?!?

onto the next thing

[Ange · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a modest, quiet book. But it is also harsh and tragic. Almost more than any other author I've read recently, Carrie Tiffany has a way of getting right at the nub of an issue with her beautiful writing. She draws you in, making you feel as if you are trundling along on the train with Jean, Robert, Mary, Mr Ohno, the cows and chickens, and then suddenly hits with something unexpected. She uses phrases and sayings I haven't heard for so long, and then there is an instant recognition of something I heard my Grandfather say a long time ago. "Plurry hell" - I had all but forgotten this - then had to rush to the internet to find out what it meant. An amazing revelation (to me) about the Vienna Boys Choir who were stranded in Australia at the outbreak of WWII. Can this be true? Why don't I know about it? I'm in awe of Tiffany's ability to transfuse her novel with so many interesting (and somewhat obscure) facts while maintaining such a streamlined plot. I read it in ten minute snatches on the train or before sleeping, and I suspect this is not the best way to appreciate this lyrical novel. Highly recommended.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a total city girl, I don't often relate to books set in the countryside. But I've read both books by this writer now, both set in rural Australia, one in the 1930s and one in the 1950s and absolutely loved them both.

She has an unusual narrative style, great sense of her characters and the fragile relationships between them (especially her subtle portraits of Aussie farmers) and uses language beautifully. And you may even learn something that you would never normally come across - such as how to sex chickens or increase the wheat yield in the Mallee!


I will read anything Carrie Tiffany produces in the future. Run to your nearest bookstore, don't walk, run, trip anyone who gets in your way, and buy this and her subsequent book 'Mateship with Birds' and devour them both.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, sad historical fiction novel set around Wycheproof township in the Mallee district of Western Victoria, Australia, from 1934 to 1939. Jean Finnegan, a young seamstress, tells the story of her experience, firstly as part of an educational group travelling by train and stopping at country towns to provide guidance on living in the Australian countryside. She falls in love with Robert Pettergree. Robert believes successful wheat farming will happen if certain scientific rules are applied to farming.

Robert and Jean work hard to establish a wheat farm in the Mallee district. Things do not go according to plan!

An informative novel about life in rural Australia in the 1930s. The novel has interesting characters and good plot momentum.

This book was shortlisted for the 2006 Miles Franklin award.

[Mrsgaskell · Rating 3 out of 5]

From Publishers Weekly:
“The dusty farms of 1930s Australia are the backdrop for this rich and knowing debut novel about science, love and the limits of progress. The "Better-Farming Train," commissioned by the Agricultural Department of the Province of Victoria, travels throughout the country educating agricultural communities. Behind "[f]ourteen cars of stock and science and produce" is the women's car, home to Sister Crock, stern infant welfare teacher; Mary Maloney, cooking lecturer; and Jean Cunningham, the curious, headstrong narrator and sewing instructor. Jean avoids the men in the sitting car, where everyone gathers during long train rides. About love, she says: "I am not looking for it." Nonetheless, love finds her in the form of Robert Pettergree, who has the unusual ability to identify the origin of any handful of soil by its taste. Robert's belief in scientific progress—exhibited in his eight maxims, the Rules for Scientific Living—is unshakable. Determined to prove his theories, Robert buys a farm for Jean and himself in the vast, impoverished wheat district called the Mallee. Despite drought, mice, economic depression and war, Jean and Robert struggle to fulfill the promises of science and love.”

This is a slow-paced, rather sad story, and I didn’t warm to the characters very much. In spite of that, I actually liked the book a lot and read it in just over a day. It’s well written and the author successfully evokes another time and place. I felt I was in Australia, in the thirties, feeling Jean’s disappointment each time the wheat crop was poor and the test loaves didn’t turn out well. Maybe I could relate to it because I have a science background and I’m also from a major wheat-growing area of the world. I’ve often heard stories of crop failure on the Canadian prairies during the depression. The Better Farming Train, travelling to the isolated farming communities, seemed like the kind of thing the Canadian government might have undertaken, too. I loved the black and white photos which added to the realism of the story.

[Moses Kilolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly not an easy read. In the beginning the book drew me in, but with advancement into the work, I found myself struggling to get a clear understanding of Australia's rural life in the 30s.

I do not say that it is badly written, no. There were portions I copied out and reread for the sheer beauty of the text. But mostly I just dug my way through, made worse by the multiple interruptions of life, where the reader has to attend to many things and his reading is in sparse, little times in between.

I also did not feel that I could identify with the characters well enough. It seems to me that the work is specific to a specific way of life - in this case rural Australian farming, and to identify with the core of the story I would have to do a lot of background study. Sadly, its not always that this is possible.

"the only true foundation is a fact (Tiffany 43)."

It a rule to love, to follow and to cherish, I guess. The other seven rules are equally applicable to life, those little things that can cause the greatest difference...

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small quiet beautifully written read. Both funny and sad. About resilience, depression - both personal and economic, and a piece of Australian history I knew nothing about.

[Amadeus · Rating 3 out of 5]

“These sorts of questions about science and sensuality are at the heart of Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living. They come from time spent with scientists and farmers and the simple and under-acknowledged act of noticing things. Art starts with noticing things, the way a man holds a shovel, how a soil cracks underfoot, the serendipity of arriving at a farmhouse to find a woman stitching on the porch while her husband is on the tractor sowing the paddocks around her.”
- Carrie Tiffany

[Theo Andrews · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dreary thing indeed

[Anum · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was an utter disappointment. In Saeed Book Bank, there is a shelf that has books, which are thought-provoking, different and critically aclaimed. I often find myself attracted towards it and that is where I found Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living.

I spent a good amount of money on this book, only to find that it really did not belong with its neighbours.

It was a dry journey into the experimentation of Robert and Jean Pettergree. One was interested in his religion of soil and the other in the world of womanhood. Both their endeavours resulted in utter disastor.

I suppose what Ms. Tiffany was trying to say was that one should stick to what one knows. She picks up a man who knows the bookish science of farming and wishes to test his ideas on real soil and then makes him fail so miserably that I actually wondered what is this author trying to insinuate. Thomas Hardy, in his novel 'The Mayor of Casterbridge', suggests that the mechanisation of the traditional art of farming will mean that the 'romance of the sower' is lost. However, he too never suggests that this will lead to a decrease or determentation of the act. He suggests, like Ms. Tiffany, that the society will suffer if they let go of that tradition completely but good will come off it economically.

Then I thought that maybe Robert is just a crappy scientist. He doesn't know anything and is going all in the wrong direction. The amounts of fertilisers required etc. are miscalculated or maybe he doesn't know, simply, how to farm. However, Tiffany makes no such suggestion, so we are back at square one.

What is she trying to suggest? Science is all rubbish? Facts mean nothing? Science and the practical world are not meant to mingle? What? I suppose I understand that a life spent without love and passion is wrong, but nowhere does Tiffany suggest that Robert lacked either the capacity to love or be passionate. Indeed, she seems to suggest both.

He is so passionate about the soil and his work on wheat that he declares it his religion. His love for his wife is evident, even if he fails to ever express it. We find in him the melancholic love for his mother, for the lost sibblings, he never really got to know.

I could grasp nothing in this book and whatever conclusion I came to just plain offended me. I wonder if Ms. Tiffany was trying to suggest that the world should not move forward on the basis of science and we should always be stuck with tradition. If that is indeed true, I wonder what made her think of such a thing in the present age, and what she is trying to suggest, for I am completely lost!

[Christina Houen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carrie Tiffany’s debut novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, made a stunning start, winning the WA Premier’s Award for fiction, and being shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. I didn’t read it when it was released, though heard glowing reports of it. But I was busy with my studies, and I admit, am sceptical about award-winning novels, as I’ve often found them disappointing. I also found the title offputting, as my first husband had rules for scientific living which I found increasingly hard to live with, and our marriage ended disastrously with his abduction of our three children. I learned that rationalism and a worship of science don’t necessarily make room for love, compassion, and consideration of others.

Circumstances brought me into direct contact with Tiffany’s novel recently. I started to read it a couple of days ago and finished it yesterday. I rarely read a book so quickly. It is a small book, but it packs a lot in, and has many levels of meaning. I found that it stayed in my mind in between reading sessions, which is always a sign that I am engaged by the characters and enter into the imaginary world they inhabit. This is literary magic, not scientific!

I can’t think of another Australian novel to compare it with; it is original in many ways. I was reminded at times, though, of Patrick White’s writing, especially in The Tree of Man. White’s style is very different from the sparse, dry lyricism of Rules, which suits the harsh, dry landscape the couple inhabit. White’s style is dense, allusive and poetic, and there are meta-themes of mysticism throughout. No such mysticism in Tiffany’s novel, which is set in the Mallee district of Victoria. But there is pathos, tragedy, and a dark theme of the folly of men who seek to control and farm the land in rational, artificial ways that rupture the synergy of soil and the microbial life that inhabits it, and that ignore the tyranny of climate, drought, sandstorms, mice plagues, and more.

I feel a strong empathy with this couple, especially the narrator, Jean, who accepts the vision of Robert Pettergree of turning the soils of the Mallee into fertile, productive wheat-growing farms.

It will be a modern marriage, in which Robert and I, as free and independent units of production, will implement the proven facts of scientific research. … Robert will grow his superior super phosphated wheats and, once the wheat has been milled, I will document his success by baking the annual test loaves in my experimental kitchen.

The real basis of their union is a deep attraction, expressed in heated sexual intercourse, but this is not expressed in words. Even feelings are suppressed. Robert is locked into himself, unable to express his feelings, carrying deep wounds from childhood. He eventually tells Jean about this. She, too, was orphaned as a young child, but seems more in touch with herself, more loving. The essence of their union is in the movements of intercourse: ‘We have slipped through the science to a place of pure and perfect motion.’

Even this fails when times get hard, the crops are poor and disappointing, drought, weeds, mice, rust, and sand overtake their efforts to create a scientific paradise, and Robert becomes increasingly frustrated by his failure to realise his vision and to provide for Jean. She conceives, after they have been together several years, but the baby is born prematurely.

Then the Second World War begins, a recruiting train comes to town (the same one they had met on when it was touring through the countryside bringing ‘science to the man-on-the-land.’ Robert fakes his identity (he is not eligible for recruitment as a farmer) and Jean misses saying goodbye to him:

There was no point in dragging him back to face the failure. He’d found some new ideas to deceive himself with and they didn’t include me. But I wanted to see him. I wanted to hold him and smell his skin, feel his stubble and the flushed heat of his face against my cheek. I wanted to imprint him on me, to make a last physical memory to draw upon in my grieving.

Jean stays on. She has become part of the Mallee despite all the heartbreak. She will continue her work as a dressmaker and keep the farm going, perhaps grow ‘a different crop — something that belongs here.’

The morals of this story are not spelt out, they are embodied in the choices made, the mistakes, the illusion of progress which is measured in terms of ‘number of acres cleared in a day, bushels of hay cut, pints of milk produced, acres of seed sown, tons of firewood cut.’ Behind this illusion are the shadows of Indigenous ways of managing the land, but these are not embodied in the story. Tiffany has chosen not to bring this dimension of knowledge in as counterpoint to science, but it is present in its very absence. One wonders if another novel of hers will bring it into the story explicitly.

Reading this book has been an absorbing and enriching experience for me, and particularly enjoyable, as it speaks to my own childhood and my family’s life in outback New South Wales. My father was not a leader, a visionary like Robert Pettergree. But he had a dream of raising sheep for fine wool, which he shared with my mother. Like Robert, he failed through years of drought, the Great Depression, dust storms and more drought. Like Robert, he escaped, but not to war (which was over by the time he left). Like Jean, my mother stayed on and kept the farm going for several years, but was forced to leave when he returned and repossessed the farm so he could sell it.

That story is told in my debut memoir, This Place You Know (see the Home page).

Thank you, Karrie Tiffany, for your wonderful recreation of an era in Australian farming and a rural district worked by battling small farmers, following a model of agriculture that damages the land, denying its nature and the climate. Science has moved on since then, but monoculture and irrigation are the new model that is as much out of touch with our land as were the ‘Everyman’s Rules’.

[Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a charmer. Interesting approach/device...with the train, instruction "book", etc....I enjoyed being taken to Australia at that particular point in time, just after WWII, when science was just getting a foothold in the lives of "regular people," and held such promise. (Today we know the bitter and dark side of science: Monsanto, Bhopal, Gulf oil spill, etc.) And I came to care about the various characters a lot, thought they were diverse, complex without being too over the top. It was an optimistic story yet not saccharine. I recommend it.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in the tip shop, saw the prizes and awards listed and thought it might be worth a read. I loved it. Beautifully written, Carrie ‘notices things’, simple everyday occurances such as ‘the way a man holds his shovel, how the soil cracks underfoot’. She finds the beauty and art in the act of living. The book centres around a perplexing relationship built on lust. The isolation of Jean, in this almost silent marriage, facing the hardships of farming life in the Mallee is keenly felt. I’d ideally like to give this book 4 1/2 stars.

[Sally O'wheel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally loved this book. Stunning writing. I wanted to start from the beginning when I had finished it and read it all again. Other reviewers have commented on how it is sad. Of course the disillusionment with Science is sad for Robert but I don't think Jean ever really believed Science had the answers. The fate of the Mallee is sad. Still is. But the ending isn't sad but has the threads of hope. I wish Carrie Tiffany would write a sequel!

[Sally Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story, like Tiffany's others, is unique, spare and intelligent. Through the characters of Jean and Robert we see 1930s Australia in close up: its unforgiving landscape, the rise of unquestioning patriotism and the obsessive desire to prove that through science the land can be manipulated and shaped to suit the agenda of those who try to make a living upon it.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for my book club while I was on vacation. It's a quick read but I still think about the characters from time to time, amazed at their resilience.

[Rachael Hattam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thought I would die of boredom

[Johanna Markson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Carrie Tiffany
Jean Finnegan is traveling on the "Better-Farming Train" throughout Australia dispensing advice to wives as a sewing instructor. She and two other women give advice on cookery, mothering and domestic chores while the men on the train focus on animal husbandry and farming. It is on this train, full of livestock and odd characters, that Jean meets and fall in love with Robert Pettergree, a transplanted English scientist obsessed with soil and scientific ways to grow better crops. Even thought he seems singularly focused on science, there is also a strong sexual passion between him and Jean that draws them together.
Jean and Robert marry and purchase land to cultivate in a hardscrabble part of Australia called the Mellee. Their endless struggles as scientist farmers, and as husband and wife, carry them through the 30's and into the beginning of WWII. Mice infestation, drought, low crop growth and the struggles of friends and neighbors don't seem to deter Robert's mission to live life and grow crops scientifically. Nor do the continued setbacks deter Jean's desire to be the perfect scientific housewife.
Tiffany's prose starkly illuminates the terrifying beauty and brutality of Australia's landscape, and the struggle made by so many to turn sand to soil. There is true love for Australian in this novel. Jean is a woman to admire - courageous and adventurous. A woman of her time and beyond.

[Plum-crazy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fairly quick read (& there's even some photos to look at!) but I have to say I feel a bit indifferent towards it....I wouldn't say I really enjoyed it but then again I didn't dislike it.

I don't feel as if I got to really know the characters of Robert & Jean in any depth...not enough, anyhow, to make me care about what happened to them but at the same time the ending has left me unsatisfied, wanting to know what happens next. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to read this or perhaps I needed to read between the lines more.

If nothing else I've learnt more...far more... than I (ever) needed to know about the classification of sheep sperm....so if you're ever on "Who wants to be a Millionaire" & that question comes up....I'm your phone-a-friend....

[Vicky Hebbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished it in a few days. Considering it is a topic I have never been interested in reading about (the Australian farming landscape) it had me hooked from the first chapter to the end. Just an interesting read, well written. The female protagonist, Jean, does not share her emotions, or seems to be emotionally distant, which is intriguing and little explored in popular literature unless a woman is considered insane/damaged/etc.

[Leah Cripps · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a gem of a story. Having previously worked at an agricultural research station, the wheat trials and funny idiosyncrasies of some of the train staff were hilarious. This quite possibly is the only novel in the world to reference Victorian localities such as TeddyWaddy, Walpeup, Mitiamo and Wycheproof along with many others. Life was much tougher for Australians living in the 30s and 40s particularly for those in rural areas.

[Herb Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, this book take you to rural Australia in the 30s. The oppresive heat and harch conditions are well portrayed. My only disappointment was any discussion or conclusions about why the crops fail so miserably. Recommended.

[Elizabeth Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book - it had lots to recommend it - interesting setting, intriguing characters, evocative description but it was rather grim. I spent all the book just waiting for something else tragic to happen.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find I am lost to say what I think of this book or what it is about and yet it has had a strong influence on my state of mind. It is well written and evocative of its time, a little reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath. It will need more thought.

[Oanh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less good than Mateship with Birds but very good nevertheless.

[Corey Zerna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant to read this at a time of drought

[Sarah Bray · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the writing 8/10 for the story/enjoyment of reading 6/10

[Chris Waterford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author's first novel and I loved it. I got a good sense of life in the Mallee in the thirties. I enjoyed the characters and the quirkiness of the story.
8/10

[Jehlish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original Australian historical novel. Great premise. Engaging side characters.