'When she gets the email announcing her redundancy, Ruby Stanhope hopes to maintain the composure expected of your average London investment banker.
Instead, the next day's hangover brings two unfortunate discoveries. First, her impromptu reply to the bosses has gone viral, published everywhere from Facebook to the Financial Times. Second, she has a non-refundable, same-day ticket to Melbourne thanks to a dangerous cocktail of Victorian pinot noir, broadband internet and a dash of melancholy.
Landing in Australia, Ruby plans a quiet stay with her aunt in the Yarra Valley—but a party at the local winery results in an unexpected job offer: financial policy adviser to the Federal Leader of the Opposition.
Intrigued, Ruby heads to Melbourne for morning coffee with the Chief of Staff—and finds herself in the middle of the Treasurer's overthrow of the Prime Minister and the announcement of an early election.
Rookie Ruby, dubbed 'Roo' by her Aussie colleagues, is thrown into the campaign and spends four weeks circumnavigating Australia while trying to stay afloat in the deep end of politics. Through trial and plenty of error (including wardrobe malfunctions, media mishaps and a palate for unsavoury men) she finds passion, not just a flair, for her new career.
With its light touch and deft comic instincts, Campaign Ruby is a delightful combination of fashion, faux pas and the unexpected fun of federal politics.' (From the publisher's website.)
Ruby Blues
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2011
Z1803482
2011
single work
novel
'In Campaign Ruby, Ruby managed to get:
1. drunk
2. the leader of the Opposition elected
3. Luke
'Now that the balloons from the election night party have sagged, as well as the electorate's enthusiasm for the new PM, Ruby is battling political and personal spot fires. She has a whole new To Do list scrunched up at the bottom of her Prada handbag.
1. Screw things up with Luke
2. Turn 30
3. Deal with hormonal pregnant lesbian aunt
4. And an imploding government
5. Avoid killing peppy intern
6. Attend party after waxing accident
7. Cosy up to Pretty Boy
7a. Complicate things with Luke
8. Save the government from itself
9. Figure out who the hell she is
10. And who she wants'
(From the publisher's website.)
‘In human reckoning, Golden Ages are always already in the past. The Greek poet Hesiod, in Works and Days, posited Five Ages of Mankind: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron (Ovid made do with four). Writing in the Romantic period, Thomas Love Peacock (author of such now almost forgotten novels as Nightmare Abbey, 1818) defined The Four Ages of Poetry (1820) in which their order was Iron, Gold, Silver and Bronze. To the Golden Age, in their archaic greatness, belonged Homer and Aeschylus. The Silver Age, following it, was less original, but nevertheless 'the age of civilised life'. The main issue of Peacock's thesis was the famous response that he elicited from his friend Shelley - Defence of Poetry (1821).’ (Publication abstract)
