Sunny Garden
the official Nick Earls website
M o n i c a B l o o m
There was talk about school in the pool next door... Talk about teachers and nuns, some stories I’d heard from the twins before – the old nun who fell asleep in assembly and snored, the teacher who might be a lesbian and who had once been seen on a motorbike with another woman, the gardener who wore very short shorts... And the voice I knew to be Monica Bloom’s said it sounded just like Dublin...
When Monica Bloom’s Irish accent drifts over his neighbour’s fence, Matt Sherman knows that his last year of school will not turn out to be the year that he had expected. With her blue eyes, blonde plaits, small enamelled bluebird earrings, and finesse at tennis and bridge, Monica is exotic and charming and stuck in Matt’s head. Best of all she’s about to start her second-last year of school with his next door neighbours, the raucous Hartnett twins.
But then a dinner party for the bean counters from his father’s work goes awry despite new candles, fresh flowers and his mother’s best prawn cocktails. Half a cask of white wine and an internal audit later, Matt's father is sweating it out on the six o’clock news as a public scapegoat. Watching the scandal play itself out in the papers, defending his brother in the schoolyard, Matt feels the certainties of his world going to hell in a handbasket. Before he knows it, his mother is talking about getting a job, there are mysterious tablets with his father’s name on them in the bathroom cabinet, and their house on the hill is being sold by an auctioneer whose car is classified as a luxury vehicle.
And as Matt sets out for the first St Catherine’s dance of 1980, Monica Bloom is finding trouble all of her own. There is more to her story, only he doesn’t know it...
Monica Bloom is a poignant story about the power of first love and memory, expectation and change. Reading Steinbeck, learning to shave and appreciating the fact that sometimes, your days at school will not be the best days of your life. Think The Castle and Flirting – this is a brilliant portrait of Brisbane in the 1980s and of the unrequited longing for your first high-school crush.
(From the press release for Monica Bloom)
Nick's teenage years
Nick wanted to be a rocket scientist, then a sports star, or a rock star. Upon realising that his mediocre off-spin and three artless guitar chords wouldn’t cut it as a chik magnet he turned to writing. Fortunately he had three English teachers who encouraged his literary pursuits. When he was twelve, Nick read Jaws and thought it was cool because it (i) was an adult book, (ii) had moments when it was kind of scary and (iii) had two (rather chaste) references to nipples. He then read his parents’ Alastair Maclean novels and tried unsuccessfully to write one when he was fourteen.
He snuck into Apocalypse Now, and never missed an episode of Countdown. During the holidays Nick hung out with his neighbours, put on plays on the Nobles' tennis court, and played Marco Polo in the Finneys' pool. He played Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and the Eagles Hotel California until they wore out. Then he discovered Plastique Bertrand's Ca Plan Pour Moi and Soft Cell's Tainted Love, the Knack's My Sharona and Good Girls Don't.
In his last year of high school during the prefect's induction ceremony twenty-one prefects walked off one side of the stage, one (Nick) walked off the other. 1500 students laughed. This was not how he wanted to begin the year. According to Nick’s year 12 formal partner, in the intervening years several people have claimed to have been his formal partner - a claim that in most circumstances would amount to little and pass unchallenged, but not in front of her.
At a high school reunion Nick would be most likely seen talking to the fire-setters, the fraudsters, and Michael Muggeridge who left as a scandalous hero after 'an incident' down by the lockers at a school dance.
Nick’s advice to his teenage self? Stick it out - it gets better. Play to your strengths. Go easy on yourself. Learn to love those ears, or at least live with them. And find some way of telling that girl about that crush, before it's too late. Take the risk.
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Sunny Garden is designed, written and maintained by Liz Perkins, in cooperation with Nick Earls and Penguin Books. Any questions about Sunny Garden should be directed to Liz
All original contents are © Liz Perkins.