'Head of the River' by Pip Harry

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

It's the most elite school sporting event in the country. Nine rowers, 2000 gruelling metres and one chance for glory in the ultimate team sport. Sit forward ... ROW. 

Tall, gifted and the offspring of Olympians, superstar siblings Leni and Cristian Popescu are set to row Harley Grammar to victory in the Head of the River. 
With six months until the big race, the twins can't lose. Or can they? 

When Cristian is seduced by the easy route of performance-enhancing drugs, and Leni is suffocated with self-doubt, their bright futures start to fade. Juggling family, high expectations, study, break-ups, new relationships and wild parties, the pressure starts to build. 

As the final moments tick down to the big race, who’ll make it to the start line? And who'll plummet from grace?

Two days after Head of the River and Harley Grammar is subdued at morning assembly; instead of singing ‘We are the Champions’ and back-slapping the rowing stars, the entire school is in a state of mourning for an unnamed but seriously ill student. 

Meanwhile, Leni Popescu is in her own state of mourning and recovery after an accident. She’s at once scared for what her injury will mean for her rowing career, and worried about the same student her schoolmates are keeping vigil for.

Jump ahead and it’s six months to Head of River – back to where it all began. 

Leni and Cristian Popescu are rowers for Harley Grammar and part of a proud rowing family. Leni and Cristian’s mum and dad were Olympic rowers – their dad a silver medallist and part of the Romanian eight, while their mum won gold as stroke for the Australian pair. Their parents met on the dance floor at the athlete’s bar at the Olympic Village in Seoul, and their dad migrated to Australia to wed their mum after a long-distance romance.

After years of gruelling early-morning starts, pulls on the ergo machine and fighting tooth and oar for a place on their respective crews, Leni and Cristian are getting ready for Head of the River – a Victorian rowing regatta that is the oldest continuous schoolboy (now girls too) rowing event in the world, dating back to 1868. To win Head of the River is to be a hero for your school. For Leni, especially, it’s a way to kick-start her Olympic rowing career. 

But for Cristian, training for Head of the River this last year has been nothing but a prolonged soul-crushing. He’s not fit enough, as his coach revels in reminding him. A new boy, Sam, from the American school in Singapore has been at Harley Grammar for only a few months and rowing even less than that – but he’s being praised as a natural, and is breathing down Cristian’s neck for his spot on the first crew.

Through alternating chapters, we’ll see the six months leading up to Leni and Cristian’s Head of the River – the obstacles they face, mistakes they make and lessons learned through blood, sweat and Yarra River water.

‘Head of the River’ is the new contemporary YA novel from Australian author Pip Harry.

I have been excited for this book ever since I interviewed Pip Harry back in 2012, and she mentioned that her next book was going to be; “a YA novel which focuses on a brother and sister who are training for the Head of the River rowing regatta.” I was so in love with this idea for a number of reasons: the main one being how rare Aussie, contemporary YA sports novels (with male and female protagonists!) are these days. Another big reason for the excitement was the focus on rowing: because I was a rower. For one year of high school I donned a zoot suit, about killed myself on the ergo machines and participated in regatta after regatta after regatta. I’m not saying I was a good rower (my coach often yelled at me via her megaphone as she rode her bike along the bank that I had to “keep my head in the boat”, because I had a tendency to look at the passing scenery. What can I say? I’m more of a dreamer than a rower). So I felt an instant connection to this book.

Head of the River is one of the most prestigious school sporting events in Victoria. The event started out (back in 1868!) as a duel-style race between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College on the Yarra River – and has now broadened to include boys and girls’ heats, and inter-school rivalries like you’ve never seen before. It is a big bloody deal, and Pip Harry has written about it brilliantly – blending the history, pride, and competitiveness beautifully with the very relatable stories of an ambitious sister and her down-trodden brother.

Pip Harry actually really plays around with gender roles in this book. It’s sister Leni who is the gung-ho competitor with her sights on Head of the River cup and a career, like her parents’, as an Olympic rower. It’s so refreshing to read a young female character with this kind of bull-headed drive. Sure, a big character arc for Leni is learning that it’s as much her friendships in the boat that have to matter as winning, but I loved her determination and machismo; 

In the middle is a cut-out of the Head of the River cup, which I’ve coloured in with gold pen. I want it so badly it hurts. I like to touch the cup with my hand and imagine my bow girl going over the line first, thousands of people screaming on he banks of the Barwon River. Thinking about it gives me goose bumps. There’s a quote posted up that I think about during training: ‘Pain is just weakness leaving the body.’ 

By contrast, Cristian feels constantly dwarfed by his sister’s rising star. He’s not as good (or passionate) as Leni and their parents when it comes to rowing, and he feels the constant pressure to keep physically fit – particularly because he has a problem with temptation and portion control. Cristian is also seriously hung-up on one of Leni’s fellow rowers, a petite dancer called Penny who Cristian seems to continuously humiliate himself in front of; 

‘It won’t be the last time you screw up,’ she says. ‘Dad and I lost plenty of races.’  

‘But you won plenty, too.’  

‘Sure. But in rowing, you’ve got to learn to take the rough water with the glassy pond. Otherwise it will break your heart. Now show me your hands.’ 

But, as hinted in that opening chapter, stormclouds are gathering for brother and sister Popescu. Cristian’s negative self-image is leading him down a seriously dangerous path, and when Leni gets closer to the boy trying to steal her brother’s place in the boat, it causes a rift in their family. 

Speaking of family, Harry explores the Popescu dynamics beautifully and it was something else I really related to. Their father is Romanian, and migrated to Australia to marry their mother – the kids sometimes feel embarrassed by his European attitudes and poor English-language skills, and even after so many years of living here their father still feels the brunt of being a ‘foreigner’. I loved the second-generation explorations, and just the fact that the family were so close – it was a double-edged sword in that Leni and Cristian really want to make them proud, but that put added pressure on them too.

I’ve also got to say that Pip Harry has the private school scene down. I attended a private all girl’s school, and I must admit that part of my wanting to be a rower was because I thought that particular sport had a certain cachet to it that I didn’t have otherwise, being from a very blue-collar, working-class background that was so different from many of my peers. I just thought Harry captured that world so damn well. In one scene particularly; 

Instead of standing with the other parents drinking from plastic champagne glasses and eating dainty chicken sandwiches, my parents are tinkering with boats. They’ve been tinkering with boats my whole life. Dad’s adjusting the height of a rigger. Mum’s oiling a squeaky seat wheel. Dad’s the Harley Grammar boat caretaker, so he fixes, tunes and cleans all sixty boats in our fleet. 

Mum has a smudge of grease on her cheek and she’s dressed in cargo shorts and an old T-shirt. I feel an itch of embarrassment. The other rowing mothers have white teeth and done-up hair, Broome pearls and designer jeans. The dads wear polo shirts and aviator sunnies. They carry long lens SLR cameras and the 'Saturday Age'. 

Yep. That about sums it up. 

‘Head of the River’ is a compelling and thoughtful contemporary Australian YA sports novel – that it has a brother and sister protagonist who don’t conform to gender stereotypes is also deserving of praise. But ‘Head of the River’ is also compulsive reading – with a plot that catches you like a crab and pulls you under. I loved it.

5/5

Interview with Pip Harry, author of 'I'll Tell You Mine'

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I recently had the pleasure of reading Pip Harry's young adult debut, 'I'll Tell You Mine'. 

Harry is a welcome addition to the Australian YA scene, and I was delighted that I had the chance to interview her. I was doubly-delighted when Pip Harry even supplied me with photos from her days as a young adult! I am seriously thinking of asking every YA author I interview from here on in, if they'd be kind enough to let me post pics of their younger selves (seriously, how cool would that be!?)

Without further ado, here is the very cool Pip Harry!

•

Q: How were you first published, agent or slush pile?

I sent my manuscript out to agents with a query letter when I was nine months pregnant with my daughter, Sophie. I figured I wouldn't check my email or stress out as much if I had my hands full with a newborn! A few months later I got a phonecall from another Sophie - Sophie Hamley of the Cameron Creswell agency. We met up for coffee and she signed me up and sent the manuscript out to publishers. I signed with UQP not long after that and worked on the book with their dynamic Children's Book publisher Kristina Schulz and freelance editor, Jody Lee. I'll Tell You Mine became so much stronger through the exacting editing process!

Q: How long did it take you to write ‘I’ll Tell You Mine’, from first idea to final manuscript?

The actual writing took about three years, with lots of meet-ups with my writing groups. It was a further two years in developments and edits with UQP. I couldn't believe how long it took - but in the end, the book really needed that time to breathe and find it's way.

Q: Are you a plotter or a ‘pantser’? – That is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally?

Pantser! I like to discover how the story unfolds as I go along. That makes for quirky twists and turns that I don't expect. Like Lachy, the cute farmer love interest in ITYM - he just wandered onto the page from thin air as I was typing.

Q: Where do story ideas generally start for you? Do you first think of the character, theme, ending? Or is it just a free-fall?

I first think of the main character/s and then usually a basic outline of the story (in my head) and I always know the ending. The theme usually emerges as I write and flesh it out. My main character, Kate, from ITYM was first a very strong voice that I listened to and wanted to write down - the rest just unfolded word after word.

Q: You have quite a writing career! -Entertainment Editor for NW and Deputy Editor for TV Week, and Health & Travel Editor for Woman’s Day. What prompted you to turn to writing fiction –and young adult specifically?

I've been writing professionally since my early 20s - mostly on national weekly magazines. I used to read gossip magazines in class and then I found myself earning a living from knowing the names of Brangelina's kids! I had so much fun with it - interviewing huge stars and covering events like the ARIA's and Logies. As a travel writer I worked all over the world from African safaris to skiing powder in Japan and swimming with stingrays in Tahiti. Pretty good work if you can swing it! While I was working as a journo, I was studying writing fiction at night at UTS, and I knew I wanted to write a novel. I was first signed to a literary agent when I was 23 - and even though my early books never made it out into the world - since then I hoped I would one day be a published author. Writing for young adults came very naturally to me - I have no idea why! But every story I wrote that had a young character really appealed to other people and felt good to write. You've got to play to your strengths as a writer I think.

Pip Harry kindly provided photos from her own days as a young adult in high school! Photo on the right is Pip at her Year 12 formal ('prom' for any American readers) and on the left is Pip on her 16th birthday.

Q: You wrote a great post on your blog back in June, titled ‘High School Reunioning’, in which you had a bit of a reminisce about your school days at Melbourne Girls Grammar School. You also thanked your old MGGS boarding house friend (also called Kate!) in your acknowledgements of ‘I’ll Tell You Mine’. Just curious how your own school days inspired you in writing this novel, and if any real-life stories/characters pop up in the book?

The Kate I thanked in the acknowledgements is an old school friend who inspired the character of Maddy. Something about my friend Kate's free spirit as a teenager was transferred to Maddy! She is very thrilled and happy with being the inspiration for such a great character. My own school days were of course in the back of my mind while writing ITYM. I was also a rebellious teen and I spent some time in a school boarding house so I used those memories in the book. But I was a very different girl to Kate - I was extremely sports focused and had a big circle of friends. But I do think all teenagers at some stage feel isolated and misunderstood and so I think Kate's experiences are fairly universal.
 

 

Q: Kate is a ‘Goth’, partly to stop feeling invisible, and also as a tribute to her music tastes. Just wondering what sort of research you did into the Goth lifestyle in writing Kate?

In my first draft Kate was an emo! But I had no idea what that was (or what a goth was either) so I did have to go away and do some research into goths and their music, clothing ect. I ended up really loving Kate's style and I often listened to goth music when writing!

Q: Favourite book(s) of all time

Some of my favourites are The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky; Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami; Grafitti Moon by Cath Crowley; The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville; Breath by Tim Winton; Raw Blue by Kirsty Eager; Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta.

Q: Favourite author(s)?

Melina Marchetta, David Sedaris; John Marsden; Curtis Sittenfeld; John Green, Vikki Wakefield
 

Q: What advice do you have for budding young writers?

Never, Ever, Ever Give Up! If I had quit after my first rejection I would have stopped writing years ago. It took me over a decade to get published and it was easily the hardest thing I've ever done with countless setbacks and disppointments. I just stuck to it with a dogged determination and that made all the difference. And also, remember that not everyone will like your work but that doesn't mean it's no good. Just keep believing in your voice, keep polishing your skills and sharing your work with others for feedback.

Q: What are you working on now? And when can we expect your next novel to hit the shelves?

I'm working on a YA novel which focuses on a brother and sister who are training for the Head of the River rowing regatta. I hope to have a first draft finished by the end of this year, but it's anyone's guess when it will be out in bookstores! I'm planning a writing camp with my brother (also a writer) in October, at our aunts farm in Victoria. Hopefully that will help progress along!

 

'I'll Tell You Mine' by Pip Harry

Received from the author

From the BLURB:

Kate Elliot isn’t trying to fit in – that’s the whole point of being a goth, isn’t it?

Everything about her – from her hair to her clothes – screams different and the girls at her school give her a wide berth. How can Kate be herself, really herself, when she's hiding her big secret? The one that landed her in boarding school in the first place. She's buried it down deep but it always seems to surface. 

But then sometimes your soul mates sneak up on you in the most unlikely of places. Like Norris Grammar Boarding School for Girls, where's she's serving a life sentence, no parole, because her parents kicked her out.

So, how do you take that first step and reveal your secrets when you’re not sure that people want to see the real you?

Kate Elliot has done something so bad; her parents are kicking her out of home and into boarding school. What’s worse is that everyone at school knows there’s something odd about Kate switching from day-girl to prison boarder. She lives in Melbourne, for crying out loud! There’s no reason for her to commute to the boarding house, unless everyone’s suspicions about her freakdom are true . . .

This is just another in a long line of incidences that make Kate stand out like a sore thumb. She also dresses ‘Goth’ (not to be confused with emo – ever!) thanks in part to her two best friends, Nate and Annie, whom she met while waiting in line at a music festival. The Elliot name may be quite a prestigious one these days, what with her mum being a big-wig politician in Canberra – but Kate can’t live up to her ideals lately. If they’re not fighting about her room, aka: ‘the pit’, then they’re waging warfare about Kate’s clothes/hair/friends/curfew . . . it seems that Kate has ongoing battles at school against the blonde brigade and at home with her perpetually-disappointed mother. Kate can’t win.

But kicking her out of home isn’t going to fix things. At least, Kate doesn’t think so. She’s rooming with Harriet and Jess – two of the perfect posse at her school. And then there’s her third roommate, Maddy Minogue; a girl with an easy reputation and a hot brother called Lachy. This is going to be a disaster.

‘I’ll Tell You Mine’ is the debut young adult novel from Australian author, Pip Harry.

Let me start this review by confessing something. THIS WAS MY LIFE! . . . Speaking as an ex-private all girls schoolgirl, I can safely say that Pip Harry has nailed the Norris collegiate setting of ‘I’ll Tell You Mine’. I too had to adhere to wacky school rules like not eating hot food on the street in our school uniforms, always wearing our straw-hats when outside the school gates in summer and that the cloth belts on our ‘ginghams’ had to be tight and riding securely on our hips – and that’s just to name a very few. We also had Year 12 prefects who manned the school gates, inspecting uniforms and handing out detention slips (I later became one of those detention-giving prefects; I was Magazine Captain, of course! And I've got to say, it was an enjoyable power-trip).  My high school also had a boarding house attached – and the same way that Kate Elliot views the boarding house as something akin to mandatory detention, that was also the general consensus when I was at school. The ‘day girls’ really didn’t mix with the boarders – we thought it was weird that when we went home after school, they remained forever imprisoned. They were a very cliquey bunch, and the entire boarding house seemed to be an extended family who was as disinterested in us as we were in them. It wasn’t until Year 12, when a shared common room and the impending sense of doom that was final exams, actually gave us all a chance to bond and get to know one another. And us day girls discovered that those boarders could PAR-TAY! Turns out, they didn’t hide away in their cell-like rooms after the 3:30 bell. They snuck out. They each had a boyfriend-backup system to break out of school at night and live their teenage lives in heady abandon. They were actually kinda great.

I admit, the boarding school setting intrigued me (especially with ‘On the Jellicoe Road’ being one of my favourite books of all time!). But it was the opening paragraph that hooked me;

I've been grounded for sixty-two days this year. That’s 1488 hours of imprisonment. Of sitting in my room thinking about how much I hate my mother. I know I’m not supposed to hate someone who cracked her pink bits in half giving birth to me. But if you knew her, you’d understand.

Fantastic! Straight away I got an idea of Kate’s voice (pink bits – brilliant!) and in that first chapter we also learn that Kate did something so horrible to her mum, that she couldn’t bear to live with her for another second – kicking her out, and into boarding school.

So begins ‘I’ll Tell You Mine’, told from Kate’s perspective as she lives a term out of home, forced to fend for herself and reflect on how she, and her family, got to this drastic stage.

Kate was a really intriguing character. Arguably the most outwardly interesting (freaky?) thing about her is her appearance – full Goth, complete with black tulle, painted white face and drastic eyes. And while Kate adopted the Goth persona in part because of her love for the music scene, she also admits that attending school at Norris turned her invisible. She didn’t fit in with the Duke-of-Ed, white-jumper-wearing, blonde prefects, and so began to feel utterly invisible in a sea of over-achievers. Becoming Goth was a way for her to be noticed, to matter to someone, anyone.

Someone else who doesn’t fit in at Norris is Maddy Minogue – the girl whose mother died last year, and who has been busy building her reputation as the school ‘slut’ ever since. Arguably the two biggest out-casts of Norris, let alone the boarding house, I really loved when Kate and Maddy joined forces. They’re both wearing masks and almost playing a part, to an extent, and I really loved reading about how they picked each other’s layers away throughout the course of the book. 

As much as I enjoyed reading the building-up of Maddy and Kate’s relationship, I also think Harry nailed the mother-daughter conflict that’s really at the heart of the novel. Kate’s mother is a politician, away to Canberra for most of the week, and seeming only to return home to yell at Kate’s dad and express for the umpteenth time her distress at Kate’s new Goth look. Harry beautifully gets to the heart of mother-daughter conflict with these two, as they butt heads over who Kate is and who her mum wants her to be.

I did feel like ‘I’ll Tell You Mine’ was just a little too loose in some parts. There were moments when I wanted the story to be tighter, or the characters to stay on the page for just a little while longer, to really be strung out and examined. Kate’s parents, for example; very early on it becomes obvious that Kate’s home life isn’t great. Her parents have a complex back-story, which involves them both being free-spirits once (her mum even sported a nose ring for a little while!) until Kate came along and her young, 20-something parents had to settle down and get married. Over the course of their marriage they’ve drifted further and further apart – her mum into politics and a high-stakes career, and her easy-going father into a part-time graphic designer who still chases waves on occasion. There was a moment in the book when Kate reveals that she knows how bad her parents’ marriage has got – but it’s a small reflection on a botched family vacation, and isn’t really revisited again. I thought Harry did a wonderful job of writing Kate’s claustrophobic home-life – that even if I thought Kate was quite unreasonable (and a bit of a terror sometimes) I thought any outbursts she had were also a product of her parents’ high-strung, walking-on-egg-shells marriage that forever seemed on the verge of cracking wide open. I was looking forward to that boiling-over moment in their marriage – if only for release (something I think Kate feels too). But it doesn’t come. Harry shied away from the tougher stuff and ended up writing a bit of a bandaid fix for what seemed like a far more complex relationship between two very different people.

I also felt like a few secondary characters fell by the wayside towards the end of the book. Kate’s fellow-Goth friends, Annie and Nate, were interesting. I wanted to figure out if they were the bad influences Kate’s mum seemed to think, or genuine friends deserving of Kate’s time and energy. There’s even an interesting crush set-up, when Kate reveals she has unreciprocated feelings for Nate . . . this storyline, in particular, could have been a bigger bombshell towards the end of the book, but Nate and Annie actually got very little page-time considering how important they supposedly were to Kate.

A few of the secondary characters did pique my interest though, as they drifted around Kate’s periphery – like her roommates, Harriet and Jess. Harriet cries at night, even though she’s a perfect-A pupil with her sights set on a school captaincy. Swimmer, Jess, is unsuccessfully hiding a secret from the world, and while everyone can see she’ll be a lot happier when the cat’s out of the bag, she’s holding on tight to the lie. And then there’s outcast Lou, a sweet-natured fellow boarder who practices sycophancy, but who should embrace her own voice and do her own thing . . .  all of these girls, along with Kate and Maddy, really helped bring the story together. And each of them, with their secrets held close to their chests, certainly had a case of ‘I’ll Tell You Mine’ if you tell me yours.

I feel like the last few chapters really started to pick up steam, and I especially felt more connected to the story and Kate’s plight when she travels to Maddy’s farm out Wagga Wagga way. I really liked this turn in the story, because Kate gets to see the fall-out felt by the Minogue’s, since the death of their mother to cancer the year before. I also really liked this country turn, because we get to meet Maddy’s intriguing farmer brother, Lachy. And it was in these final chapters that Harry wrote some of my favourite, heart-swelling scenes;

Lachy nods and he looks out at the road and the thick scrub.
‘You know what I really hate?’ he says, just when I’m starting to think he’s stopped speaking for the night.
‘When people say my mum has gone to a better place.’ He looks up at the sky, which is starting to darken. ‘No better place for her than right here, I reckon,’ he says, and it’s all I can do not to lean over and hug him. He sounds so broken. ‘Here is where her family, her friends are. Y’know?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. But I don’t really know what it’s like to lose someone I love. And I guess that makes me lucky.

Reading Pip Harry’s debut novel had me reminiscing about my own private school days, spent in chequered gingham and straw-hats, braving the ferocious wars of all-girl school terrain. Harry excels at setting – from the vivid recreation of dorm-life, to Kate’s claustrophobic home life with parents who are worlds apart. There were times when I wished we’d spent more time with certain characters or that Harry had chosen a rougher route for their development, instead of shying away on occasion . . . but, all in all, this was a lovely introduction to a new Aussie YA author who I will certainly be keeping my eye on.

4/5