How will we be livin' in the 80s?

Remember the eighties? Bad hair, beauty pageants, fabulous television and even not so fabulous music? Rebecca Sparrow certainly does. So much so, that she's invited us all on a trip down memory lane in her debut novel, The Girl Most Likely, which follows a few weeks in the life of Rachael Hill - one time travel writer, beauty queen drop out, and tv theme junkie.

Rachael has just put her parents on a plane to London, neglecting once again to tell them she recently got hitched in Vegas, and finds herself back in her childhood bedroom - a room which, as the back cover of the novel puts it, is still celebrating 1987. Not that that's a bad thing. In fact for readers in the right age group (such as myself) who remember watching Mork and Mindy at 3:30 in the afternoon, and used to know all the words to the Phil Collins albums, 1987 was a swinging time.

Set in Brisbane, The Girl Most Likely examines the new phenomenon of the quarter-life crisis, as Sparrow so aptly describes it. What happens when your great job, your perfect boyfriend and your seemingly meaningful honour degree all disappear before your eyes? You move back into your parent's house, get a job babysitting a monster 6-year-old, enter the Miss Brisbane pageant to appease your mother's aspirations of you becoming a beauty queen, and proof read your gay best-friend's erotic fiction in your spare time, apparently. But Rachael soon finds that her seemingly perfect former life was not nearly as satisfying as her current 'froot loop' munching existence.

The Girl Most Likely is sweet, funny, and incredibly accurate in reference to the 1980's. Sparrow was mentored by fellow Brisbane novelist, Nick Earls, throughout the writing of the novel, and his influence is traceable through the laugh-out-loud situations the central characters find themselves in. And of course, with all of these personal crises, there's an important lesson to be learnt by the last page.

The first of a series of new writers to be published by UQP this year, Sparrow sets a cracking pace for her fellow first timers to follow - and we look forward to reading more fresh and fabulous works throughout the year.

Belinda Yench

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