Pegasus in the Suburbs

Jennifer Kremmer (author)

Allen&Unwin, Australia: 1999; 225pp

ISBN: 1865080012

Genres: realistic fiction

Issues: family, relationships, social condition, values

Winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award, 1998.

‘The Sterry family was like a new branch in Darwinian logic. Suburban, nuclear, it was the outcome of its time. Everything that had gone into producing it was reflected in the architecture and space, the suburb. To maintain the illusion of consequence, driveways led from houses onto roads, and roads from the suburbs to elsewhere. Cars waited at kerbsides or driveways. The driving of cars was not necessarily always masculine, but a mirror was often tucked behind the passenger seat visor. It was the perfect height and width to apply lipstick.

Maree Sterry is one of three children in a conventional suburban family in a conventional suburban house. It is a place where boys are tough and girls wear skirts, where women keep house and fathers make the rules. It might be 1970 but 1950s expectations still apply.

Maree decides that the best escape from this uncomfortable life would be if she became an orphan and was adopted by her teacher. Failing that, she would like to be a horse, free to gallop for miles, unfettered by her father's conception of What Girls Should Be Like. And as being a horse is not physically possible, she would like to have a horse of her own. A horse that will take her away from the rules and conventions of suburbia, that will enable her to be someone significant, someone people will listen to, someone who can make herself heard.

This satirical narrative has darkly comical aspects that can be quite discomforting for the reader, perhaps striking a little too close to home. It creates a penetrating image of a time and place where people are mostly concerned with appearance, with keeping up with the neighbours, and with conforming to their society's rules and expectations. It is about the pains of growing up, the reasons for rebellion, and only in a small way about a teenage girl and her horse.