ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Out of the Blue by Joanna Fincham, Educating Alice by Alice Greenup and Love in the Outback by Deb Hunt to argue that such texts provide important insights into the ways contemporary rural social life is lived and imagined. Memoirs set in the rural environment have a long history in Australia. More recently, though, a genre of popular accounts, written by women and describing their move to country settings from the city, has been identified and labelled 'farm lit', rural romance or 'chook lit'. A considerable proportion of rural romance novels feature 'city girls' who find love in the countryside, alongside those featuring country-born women battling to save their family farm or returning from the metropolis to help in a crisis. In most cases and in common with a great deal of chick lit, the narrative focuses on the female narrator and her journey from romantic disappointments through to relationship felicity.
