Good Oil by Laura Buzo

Fifteen-year-old Amelia Hayes is a typical Australian teen. She’s just entered high school and has yet to find a clique or have a meaningful interaction with a boy beyond being shoved on the bus. Her part-time, after-school job is the most interesting part of her life. She works at the grocery store Woolworth’s aka “The Land of Dreams”.  She’s fallen hard for her funny, charming, and attentive trainer Chris, who is six years her senior. If only she were two years older…

Twenty-one-year-old Chris is finishing an Honors Arts degree at uni, worried sick about what he’ll do after he graduates. He still lives at home, he still works at Woolworths. He’s still stuck training the new cashiers as one-by-one the coworkers his age are being promoted. He’s still crippled by the memory of his summer love Michaela and hasn’t gotten rid of the Kathy virus – yep – he’s still utterly alone on the woman front. He likes youngster Amelia more than any of the potentials, but they are in totally different stages of life. If only she were two years older…

I’d heard a little buzz about Laura Buzo’s debut Aussie YA novel Good Oil through the blogosphere but since it’s not available here, I hadn’t given reading it much thought. But when it came up as one of the available titles of the Go Aussie Book Tour I remembered enough about it that I didn’t hesitate to select it as one of my three picks. And when I went back and read the premise I was not disappointed. I like alternating male-female perspectives and was attracted to Amelia’s character right away.

Good Oil was such an unexpected and pleasant surprise starting from its arrival on a particularly off day for me. Not only did receiving it in my mailbox turn my day completely around, but when I opened it, I was immediately sucked into Amelia and Chris’s world. Hooked but also voraciously reading its 283 pages at a time when I was swamped with my personal life, which says it all. So often nothing fits the bill when I’m stressed, but this did swimmingly well. Being dropped into Amelia and Chris’s life on and off the clock at Woolworth’s without explanation made sinking into this book effortless. Amelia, naïve yet mature beyond her years; and Chris, happy yet stir crazy as he frets over what to do post-uni. Chris treating Amelia as a twenty-something, Chris enjoying her innocence and her intelligence as they discuss feminism, the classics of English literature, and movies. Amelia loving her treatment as an adult and Amelia liking the company of a more mature boy who is not all awkward hormones and who has a thing or two to teach her from his age and experience. I don’t know how any reader – teen or adult – could not relate to this. Amelia’s dreamy, hopeless love of Chris resonated strongly with me. A favorite passage that defines the meaning of “crush” so well it could be in the dictionary:

For those who are unfamiliar with the lifestyle, you do get used to having a whopping, pointless crush. By using the word ‘lifestyle’ I don’t mean to imply that it is in any way glamorous or desirable. Just that it becomes a normal part of everyday life, and your body gets kind of attuned to functioning on that plane. Your friends and teachers get used to you staring out of windows, when you used to be quite sharp. You stare out of all kinds of windows: classroom windows, bus windows, your bedroom window, over the sink and out of the kitchen window. Your central nervous system speeds up when the object of your affection is near, or expected to be near. Your senses sharpen, particularly peripheral vision. I am acutely aware of Chris’s movements at work. I see him approaching even when I’m studying a bag of beans to distinguish whether they’re broad beans or round beans. I know which girls he’s talked to throughout the shift. I know when he’s preoccupied or playful by the way he moves. I know when he’s pissed off that Kathy has been talking to Stuart Green from Groceries. I know it all. Sometimes I mutter his name under my breath like a madwoman.

Exciting, confusing, and above-all all-consuming: Laura Buzo has completely nailed what it’s like to be a teenager with an eons-out-of-your-league crush. For that, I loved Good Oil. It’s landed on that very short, exclusive list of books like Honey, Baby, Sweetheart that I’d like to go back and give my teenage self, because she sure needed this one. Best of all the ending is not wish-fulfilling or unrealistic. It’s honest and refreshing and just as the back cover blurb says, a little bit bittersweet. I don’t think a sequel is planned, but sign me up – I’m so there. I adore Amelia and Chris and would love to see how their immediate futures pan out.

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