Aussie YA Week Flashback Read: Raw Blue

When Kirsty Eagar's Raw Blue hit shelves in 2009, people weren't sure what to expect from this debut novelist. Very quickly though, the Eagar bandwagon started rolling. Every month, more fans began to read the dark and intense story of Carly and her troubles in dealing with a horrific past and her passionate love of surfing. Then it took on another level and US book bloggers came to party, with stunning reviews and Raw Blue praise posts, practically begging a US publisher to recognise this gem of a book.

'When Eagar’s talent for stunning prose meets a protagonist whom we love despite her best attempts to dissuade us, the result is a beautiful and lingering story that reinfuses life into us.' Steph Su Reads

'Kirsty Eagar writes in a raw, stark style that sneaks up like a building wave and crashes down on you with cascading emotion.' Forever Young Adult

In this Aussie YA Week flashback extract we meet a raw and distracted Carly, wild and desperate to forget a unknown memory that haunts her.


I decide to go the long way home, Wakehurst Parkway. I just want to drive. I want to smoke too, but that’ll have to wait. I’m no good at smoking and driving at the same time, the ash always comes back in the window at me and, besides, I like to take my time over a cigarette, make it an event.

Once through Seaforth and on the open road, I speed up to ninety, winding down my window. I push through to a hundred and ten, and the lights from the cars coming the other way blind me. I feel like I’m being sucked towards them, like you can be sucked over the edge of a cliff. I focus on the white line on my side of the road. The urge to let go of the wheel and just see what happens is compelling. If I live, I’ll wake to find myself in hospital. I won’t have to do anything, deal with anybody, talk, be scared anymore, because I will have become somebody else’s responsibility. And if I die, well then everything’s solved. No more being angry like this.

It’s so tempting. I frighten myself when I cross the bridge near the back of the lakes at a hundred and twenty. The bitumen is raised there and when I hit it at that speed, for a moment I think I’ve lost control and the car’s going to hit the side rail. But then I’m over the bridge and I brake sharply. I squeeze the steering wheel tight, leaning forward like Mr Magoo, really trying to concentrate on what I’m doing. I pass Garden Street, which is where I’d usually turn to get to Powderworks Road
and home, and turn off at the smash repairer’s, making my way through the back streets to the break.

I pull into the top car park and sit there in my car, smoking out the window, listening to the surf. It’s too dark to go down to the beach, just being near it is enough.

If I close my eyes I can imagine crashing. I see it in slow motion, like a crash-test dummy reconstruction where I’m the dummy. The Laser swerving across the road to hit a brick wall – the one near the sports grounds at the back of Seaforth – yellow bonnet crumpling, metal screeching, indicator
lights exploding and spraying orange glass. My neck whiplashes forward, the windscreen shatters and the car presses in around me like a cocoon. Tight, tight, tighter, the warmest hug in the world.

It scares me. I don’t want to do it. But sometimes I think it’s the only way I’ll be able to turn off what’s in my head.