Burton, Rebecca 1970–

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Burton, Rebecca 1970–

PERSONAL:

Born 1970, in Australia; partner's name Wayne.

ADDRESSES:

Home—South Australia.

CAREER:

Novelist.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Varuna Award, for Leaving Jetty Road.

WRITINGS:

Leaving Jetty Road, Angus & Robertson (Pymble, New South Wales, Australia), 2004, Knopf (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Australian novelist Rebecca Burton brings to life the world of a group of South Australian teens in her young-adult novel Leaving Jetty Road. In the novel, Natalie, Lise, and Sofia have been best friends throughout their years at their private high school. As they start their senior year, the girls decide to make a joint vow to become vegetarians. This choice ultimately causes changes that will allow each girl to come into her own as an individual. For example, when a job at a local vegetarian restaurant sparks romance in Nat's life, her role as official peacemaker takes a back seat to her tenuous relationship with Josh. Shy and somewhat of a loner, Lise finds that vegetarianism helps her deal with the eating disorder that has kept her hiding in the background, while popular Sofia is distracted from her academics when she develops a crush on a young man who is mature enough to be ambivalent about her charms.

Praising Burton's novel as "well-written" and "never-didactic," Frances Bradburn added in Booklist that Leaving Jetty Road is an "absorbing story about the tug and pull of old friendships as a teen's world expands." The author's themes—conveyed to readers through the intertwining narrations of Nat and Lise—will "have wide appeal, as will this story," predicted Kliatt contributor Claire Rosser, and School Library Journal reviewer Rhona Campbell cited Lise's narrative in particular for presenting teen readers with "a painfully honest confessional of the insecurities and self-loathing leading her into serious anorexia nervosa." Calling Leaving Jetty Road "psychologically intense," a Publishers Weekly reviewer nonetheless deemed Burton's story "optimistic" because as the story concludes the three teens "overcome their obstacles even as they choose different paths."