Holding Back the Nausea: The Boundary Fence

The Boundary Fence by Alissa Callen

Mira

Pp. 343

This outback romance is full of clichés rather than character.  All the women like baking and organising events, and they all want to get married and have babies. All the men like rounding up cattle (or, in our hero’s case, bison), and fishing. They also all want to get married and have children; they have “dreams of finding someone to love and to raise a family with.” Ella is the local vet who has had heartbreak in her life – we are told this repeatedly – and she has a scar on her thigh to prove it (an attractive one, obviously). She is beautiful and smells of cherry blossom. Saul is a local dude who runs a bison herd, has had trauma in his life – we are told this repeatedly as well – and is devastatingly handsome. Of course they should be together but keep inventing spurious reasons why they can’t be – “As hard as it was, for both of their sakes, he had to stay on his side of the boundary fence” – which drag the book out until they fall into each other’s arms at last.

There is little danger that we shouldn’t see this couple as dreamy but slightly damaged. Ella is “Dressed in loose black running shorts and a fitted white tank top, she was all long legs, curves and tousled blonde hair.” To be fair, Saul is equally objectified. “Even though he wore a loose royal blue shirt, as she drew near she had trouble looking away from where the cotton pulled tight across his biceps.” Ella has a lot of trouble looking away.

For some reason – there would be no book otherwise – they decide they will only cause more heartache if they fall in love, so they try so hard not to. It is a hardship for us all. With supposedly selfless passion, Saul wants Ella to be happy, even if this means not being with her. She cuts her hair to try and see if he will still be interested in her when she’s got short hair – which is, of course, beautiful. Yes, it really is that superficial. While the author falls over herself trying to explain how they are so noble and altruistic, they are incredibly self-absorbed, to the point that Ella seems to think everyone is studying her so closely they remember what she looked like the last time she wore a certain dress. “Bethany had already once remarked that she looked different and it hadn’t been due to her haircut… She’d wear something no one had seen before to mask anything else that could appear different.”

The book makes an effort with the setting – the town of Woodlea near Dubbo, NSW – and it’s all red earth and dusty boots in the outback. There are bush dances and rodeos; country weddings and hay bale competitions; beer nights and convoys of hay runners; snake bites and sick horses. It is very hot and dry verging on drought and this conveys a soupçon of atmosphere. There are lots of characters in the book but they have no individual features and are impossible to tell apart; sometimes it’s even difficult to know if the characters are human or animal.

It is no spoiler to say that Ella and Saul get their happy ever after, as that is the only point to this pap. “Nothing could have prepared him for kissing Ella. Her sweetness and warmth moved him in ways that went beyond the physical. She filled the lonely and dark void within him with laughter and warmth. Emotions he’d banished and refused to acknowledge flared into life. Being with Ella made him feel complete.” Well, good for him; being with them has made me feel nauseous.

Cat care

Chester has hurt his tail. We have only been back for a week and he has got in a fight. I suppose boys will be boys, and cats will be cats, and boy cats will fight in your back garden. He came in all subdued and smoochy, which is a sure sign that he has done something wrong, got hurt by it, and now wants comforting (see what I mean about boys?).

So I took him to see the lovely people at Remarkable Vets. He has been a kitty client of theirs before. They were pleased to see him. I think this was because they genuinely think he is a cool cat but the fact that he keeps incurring vet fees can't do him any disservice.

He was less pleased to see them. They injected him with anaesthetic, shaved off his fur, sliced and drained an abscess and patched him up with a poultice bandage. As you can see, he is unimpressed. The vet tells me that as the injury is to his tail, this probably means he was running away. Wounds around the head are more likely to indicate that the cat was the aggressor. I always knew he was a lover; not a fighter.

The bandage was meant to stay on for 24 hours, but he was relentless until he had chewed it off. I guess it lasted about 20 hours though, so that's not too bad. He is now on a course of antibiotics which, fortunately, we can disperse into his food. Have you ever tried to give a cat a pill? It's not easy. They don't understand it's for their own good, and they are damn sure that it is going to hurt you at least as much as it hurts them.

Chester is not quite a million-dollar moggie, but he's getting there. In his short life he has been savaged by a dog, hit by a car, sliced a tendon in his paw and now been in a cat fight. I expect there will be more. I keep telling him that his behaviour is unbecoming to a pedigree, but he's not having any of it.

Interestingly, the vet bill was broken down into individual costs for the drugs, surgery and care. None of this stuff comes cheap. I'm not suggesting we should pay for health care as humans, but sometimes I think, if it weren't for the administration costs, it wouldn't go amiss to actually see how much each hospital visit costs. Someone has to pay for all that, and it comes out of your taxes. It might help to know what you're paying for, and perhaps we would make better, and more appreciative, patients, who take control of our own recovery - Chester will certainly be keeping his wounds clean.

And maybe, just maybe, teenagers would think twice before hurtling drunkenly towards each other at speed if they knew how much it costs to deliver them from each smouldering car wreck. But then again, maybe not. After all, boys will be boys...