Review: I Say Tomato by Katie Wall

I Say Tomato had, until a few days ago, the rare distinction of being the book that has sat on my to-read pile for the longest. I purchased it back in 2010 from a popular secondhand bookstore, slightly amazed that I had found a new release book there for less than three dollars. I took it home, placed it on my to-read pile and well ...

I guess these things happen ...

I Say Tomato is a brilliantly fun and entertaining novel about an Australian actor who is walking what has, in recent years, become a very familiar path for a lot of young actors. After a successful stint in a popular Australian television drama, she travels alone to LA to try her luck in Hollywood. From there, the reader is treated to an account of what Hollywood looks like through the eyes of a young Australian girl who probably isn't going to become a big star. Sunny is a refreshingly honest character though she is struggling a bit with what she wants out of life. A few months ago, back in Australia, her long-term boyfriend proposed and she turned him down. Now she is struggling with that choice. As the novel goes on, we see that travelling to Hollywood is more of an excuse for Sunny to hide from her feelings and the result of her choices than what it is about her trying to forge a career for herself as an actress.

Debut author Katie Wall is an AFI award winning actress (for her performance as Belinda in Marking Time,) and her knowledge of the industry, in Australia and abroad, shows quite comfortably and confidently in her work. Parts of the novel feel very episodic--moving from one scene to the next without really looking back--though what really keeps it together is learning more about Sunny and her relationship with Tobey who is back in Australia and who may or may not be moving on and finding someone else. With that in mind I would have liked an ending that gave Sunny a bit more closure, rather than leaving us wondering what would happen next between her and her ex-boyfriend Tobey now that she was back on Australian soil and had made some important decisions (I don't think I'm giving away too many spoilers by saying that).  

I Say Tomato offers an brilliant insiders view of life as an actor and its exploration of how Hollywood may feel to an outsider from halfway across the world. The relationship between Sunny and Tobey seemed very real, full of problems caused by miscommunication, fear and indecision. Recommended. 


Comments

shelleyrae @ book'd out said…
LOL I have books that have been on my to read shelf for at least double that length of time! Glad you enjoyed the book though!
20 February 2014 at 21:21
Kathryn White said…
Lol! It was a great read. I'm glad I'm not the only one who leaves books on a to read shelf for a long time :-)
20 February 2014 at 21:54
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more