AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 6302759978448124475.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Avoiding Mr Right single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2008... 2008 Avoiding Mr Right
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Peta Tully has found her Mr Right. The only trouble is, she's not sure she's ready to settle down. Not just yet, anyway - so when she's offered a twelve-month contract interstate which just might win her the job of her dreams, she puts her Sydney life on hold, packs her bags and jumps on a plane, leaving her doting boyfriend behind.

'Peta takes a voluntary vow of celibacy, but sticking to it proves harder than she imagines.' (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • 'This is Anita Heiss's second book about Peta, Alice, Liza and Dannie, four deadly thirty-something chicks from Sydney's eastern beaches.' - back cover

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • North Sydney, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Random House Australia , 2008 .
      image of person or book cover 6302759978448124475.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 354p.
      Note/s:
      • Publication date: 1 August 2008.
      ISBN: 9781863256049, 9781864715828 (ebook), 1864715820 (ebook)
    • Cammeray, Cremorne - Mosman - Northbridge area, Sydney Northeastern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Simon and Schuster Australia , 2023 .
      image of person or book cover 3420621504348444598.jpeg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 368p.
      Note/s:

      •  Published 3 May 2023

      ISBN: 9781761109928
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Other Formats

  • Braille.
Find library holdings on Trove

Related Works

y separately published work icon Not Meeting Mr Right Anita Heiss , Milsons Point : Bantam Australia , 2007 Z1354637 2007 single work novel humour (taught in 5 units)

'Alice Aigner is successful, independent and a confirmed serial dater - but at her ten-year school reunion she has a sudden change of heart. Bored rigid by her married, mortgaged and motherly former classmates, Alice decides to prove that a woman can have it all: a man, marriage, career, kids and a mind of her own.

'She sets herself a goal: meet the perfect man and marry him before her thirtieth birthday, just under two years away. Together with her best friends Dannie, Liza and Peta, Alice draws up a ten-point plan. Then, with a little help from her mum, her dad, her brothers, her colleagues and her neighbour across the hall, she sets out to find Mr Right. Unfortunately for Alice, it's not quite as easy as she imagines.

'Who could not fall in love with our Koori heroine as she dates (among others): Renan, whose career goal is to be the world's best moonwalker and male hula dancer; Tufu the commitment-phobic Samoan football player; scary Simon the one-night stand; and Paul - Mr Dreamboat, but perhaps too good to be true. All the while, Alice skilfully avoids dating Cliff, son of her mum's friend, a confirmed bachelor who isn't likely to settle down with a woman anytime soon.' (Publisher's blurb)
VIEW ALL RELATED WORKS (1)

Works about this Work

Educating the Reader in Anita Heiss’s Chick Lit Imogen Mathew , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , November vol. 10 no. 3 2016;

' In this essay, I use a close reading of Anita Heiss’s five chick lit novels to argue that racial identity profoundly affects the relationship between the chick lit novel and advice manual genre. In Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit, Caroline Smith contends that the chick lit novel critiques and satirizes regimes of female control through its engagement with the domestic advice manual. This relationship, however, does not always work in the way Smith assumes because the protagonist is not always white: she may be Latina, Chinese, South-East Asian, or, as Anita Heiss shows, Aboriginal Australian: Heiss’s fiction serves as an advice manual, designed to expose readers to the correct norms and behaviors for interacting with Australia’s First Peoples.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
Passions and Illusions : Anita Heiss's Stories Michael Connor , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , June vol. 56 no. 6 2012; (p. 32-35)
Sex and the Global City : Chick Lit with a Difference Wenche Ommundsen , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Women's Writing , July vol. 5 no. 2 2011; (p. 107-124) 'Chick lit' by young non-Western writers provides a rich field of investigation for critics interested in the interaction between local and global, cosmopolitan and vernacular, and between the different inflections of cosmopolitanism which emerge against a complex backdrop of contemporary popular culture and age-old traditional practices. The paper focuses on four novels modelled on Candace Bushnell's chick lit 'classic' Sex and the City: Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, The People's Republic of Desire by Annie Wang and two novels by Indigenous Australian author Anita Heiss, Not Meeting Mr Right and Avoiding Mr Right. The veneer of consumer cosmopolitanism plays a part in all these books, but they can also be read as illustrations of the 'discrepant modernities' which have given rise to different cosmopolitanisms. [Author's abstract]
What Anita Heiss Wants... Tara Ali , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: Australian Women's Health , March 2010; (p. 88-90) 'Dubbed Indigenous Australia's answer to Carrie Bradshaw, the multi-talented writer shares her secrets for creating the life that want- via a few stops st Tiffany's.' Source: Women's Health (March 2010)
Heiss Carries On With New Book Nancia Guivarra , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 13 August no. 432 2008; (p. 48) 'Avoiding Mr Right is Heiss's second novel about the lives of urban thirty-something Aboriginal women. It is described by Heiss's friend and fellow author Terri Janke as 'fun, sexy and adventurous'. (Koori Mail 13/08/2008)
Anita Heiss Puts Koori Slant on Sex and the City Judy Skatssoon , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 31 July 2008;
— Review of Avoiding Mr Right Anita Heiss , 2008 single work novel
Wagging the Finger Wrongfoots Romance Rosalie Higson , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23-24 August 2008; (p. 11)
— Review of Avoiding Mr Right Anita Heiss , 2008 single work novel
In Short : Fiction Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 6-7 September 2008; (p. 30)
— Review of Avoiding Mr Right Anita Heiss , 2008 single work novel
The Multi-Tasker Katie Horner (interviewer), 2008 single work interview
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , July vol. 88 no. 1 2008; (p. 53)
Meet the Queen of Koori Chicklit Judy Skatssoon , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 9 August 2008; (p. 10)
The Koori Carrie Catherine Keenan , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 10 August 2008; (p. 12)
This is My Dream Judy Skatssoon , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 23 August 2008; (p. 13)
Black Chicklit Back With Heiss' New Book Judy Skatssoon , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: National Indigenous Times , 7 August vol. 7 no. 159 2008; (p. 12)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (13)
Last amended 10 Feb 2023 12:15:50
Subjects:
Settings:
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
  • Melbourne, Victoria,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X