Everything I Knew

Penola is in Coonawarra country, home to terra rossa soil—soil that has produced some of the finest Cabernet Sauvignons this reviewer has ever tasted.

Set in 1964, Robbie Burns lives the typical life of a 14-year-old in Penola, a small country town, where cultural opportunities are limited. Everyone knows everyone, and the highlight of the week is Saturday footy. Not much else happens. A certain Miss Pamela Peach arrives as a teacher at the local school—a sophisticated city woman whose artistic ways and modernism captivates Robbie. He has a vivid sci-fi imagination, and his new teacher encourages him. Soon, Robbie becomes obsessed with her, and his youthful fantasies lead to unintended and terrible consequences.

Towns such as Penola in 1964 were traditionally rural and isolated, it was then, suddenly forced to grapple with an outsider whose ideas were decidedly modernist. And that begs the question—why would a young, progressive teacher, with a changing big-city world at her feet, move to an isolated town uncertain about embracing change?

This novel explores these themes along with early teenage innocence and desire. Told through Robbie’s first-person narrative, the novel challenges the reader to read between the lines to understand Pamela Peach’s motivations. To reveal the tragic consequences of events would be too much of a spoiler. This reviewer entered the book with no prior knowledge of the story and was glad to experience it without expectations.

Author Peter Goldsworthy shifts seamlessly between humour and tragedy, making this a compelling read. And while there are moments when Robbie’s narration feels slightly awkward, it’s hard not to be challenged by the novel’s exploration of coming-of-age innocence in this unsettling, small-town Australian story.