Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living

The novel follows Jean Finnegan, a sensible and appealing young seamstress who, when the story opens in 1934, has earned a billet in the women's car at the rear of the Better Farming Train that tours Victoria, bringing agricultural science to the man-on-the-land. The rest of the train consists of 14 cars, each dedicated to some aspect of farm labour - a pig car, a cattle car, a sheep car, a wheat car, even a chicken-sexing car run by world-famous Japanese chicken-sexer Mr Ohno, whose admiration manages to unsettle Jean despite his almost non-existent English.[1]

• 2003 won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript
• 2005 won the Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Fiction
• 2006 shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
• 2006 shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
• 2007 winner of the Dobbie Encouragement Award
• 2006 shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
• 2007 shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
• 2007 longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award

The novel carried the following dedication:

"For T. P. S., T. E. S. & G. R. T. and with heartfelt thanks to K. J. S."

• The Age: "..a highly accomplished, adroit and funny-serious novel, which, unlike a Mallee farm, works almost perfectly."[1]
• Blogcritics: "..all of Australia’s 20th-century history is here – the struggle to find a workable relationship with an ancient continent, to come to terms with its place in Asia, two world wars, the Depression, stories that are indeed not just Australian, but universal."[2]