Raincheck On Timbuktu
Kristen Murphy

Penguin Books
YA Fiction 2001

251p pbk $17.95

ISBN: 0-14-100743-5        

Raincheck on Timbuktu is a book about female teen issues and I would recommend it for girls 12-16 years that are into boys and relationships. The author, Kirsten Murphy, writes about a girl, Lucy Morgan, and her friends’ teenage lives.

The girls are in an all-girls college in Melbourne. They all have different personalities but still relate to each other. Lucy is very organised and has already decided at what age she wants to get married. She is not into wild parties and dating boys, unlike almost everyone else in her year and even some of her best friends. Lucy is not the friendliest of people and often over reacts. She regularly has disputes with her friends and doesn’t even really like her father.

It isn’t set out like a normal novel. Lucy e-mails her friend, Kate, who is in Canada at a billet’s house. Each e-mail is a new chapter, and in between every e-mail there is a diary entry written by Lucy.

I found the book boring in the middle and I wasn’t really absorbed in it. It wasn’t a book that I would usually pick up and find interesting. It was a bit dragged out in places. I think some teenage girls would like to read it, and the author has done a good job appealing to that particular group. The language used in the book was easy to read and understand.

Soraya, aged 12, Canberra, ACT

Lucy knows about her family, her friends, and naturally, about herself.  However, being a teenager, these certainties turn out to be not quite as certain as she thought - through fights, confrontations and normal, everyday teenage life Lucy learns to apologise, to forgive and to take life as it comes.

From the time the book is opened the reader finds that comedy runs from page to page; romance, friendship and family love are in full supply; and although not suspense packed, the book does have its exciting, heart thudding moments (not to mention many tearjerking ones, as well).

This realistic and inspirational book describes teenage issues with emotion and a truthfulness that startles the reader.  Although far from confronting, Raincheck on Timbuktu is convincing to the extreme, and the characters are unmistakeably recognisable.  The easy to relate to events are touching, the characters fascinating and the plot down to earth but exciting.

It does take a few pages to get used to the style, but once you get into it, the book becomes gradually harder to leave.  This, Kirsten Murphy’s first book, is for any teenage girl who has had a plan gone wrong or an ambition made impossible, and decided that it was for the better.

Christine, Year 9, NSW