SomethingToDo2

As offspring of the man notorious for lines such as “detailed programmatic specificity”, I didn’t have high expectations for Jessica Rudd’s debut novel Campaign Ruby.

But luckily for herself and the rest of us, she bypassed the Ruddspeak gene. Instead, her novel is a witty romp through the madness of an Australian election campaign.

It’s a smart premise. The protagonist Ruby is English, an investment banker who after being fired from her fancy-pants job in London, gets sloshed on pinot noir and buys a plane ticket to Australia. Few pages later and she’s being hired as a policy adviser slash lifesaver for the opposition leader on the campaign trail. Ruby is highly reminiscent of Becky Bloomwood from the Confessions of a Shopaholic series, a character who encounters lots of embarrassing-but-amusing events while simultaneously saving the day with some much needed common sense.

But the advantage of her being English is that non-wonk readers (aka the people most likely to read this novel) can learn all about Australian politics with Ruby and aren’t expected to be down with lingo like door stops, the six o’clocks and polls. It’s also fascinating to see the campaign trail — a mess of planes, media buses, early mornings and disaster management — from a relatively idealistic political side as opposed to cynical journalists’ tales.

But it’s no wonder Jessica called her publishers in tears when her dad got the boot — the comparisons between the Campaign Ruby storyline and the real life Rudd spill are far more pronounced than I expected. The once highly popular PM has trouble connecting with voters and gets booted in the night by his female deputy. The ex-PM gives a teary press conference with his loyal family by his side and shortly after the new PM gives a speech declaring “The Australian people have been telling us for some time now that change is needed — not a change of government, but a change of leadership. Australia, we heard you, and came — albeit reluctantly — to make that change”, as she calls an early election.

Yes, Campaign Ruby is chick lit. But chick lit doesn’t necessarily mean dumb. Rudd’s a snappy writer, with a wonderful ability to inject enthusiasm into what would normally be a fairly dull line. Several times I’d read a phrase, chuckle and think “clever verb Jessica, very clever”. Sure, it’s obvious which fella she’ll end up with. And there is a lot of talk of Christian Louboutin boots and Scanlan & Theodore cigarette pants. But I fully support any attempt to make Australian politics a more thrilling subject for young females and Rudd certainly does a better job at that than her dad ever managed.

Note: I borrowed First Dog on the Moon’s copy that he nicked from the publishers to give to his dad. Unfortunately the cover got bent in my handbag. As a hater of book wreckers, my sincere apologies to Grandpa Dog for the crinkled cover.

The details: Campaign Ruby is available from all good, and presumably most bad, book shops.