memoir – Page 2 – Aussie Reviews

After Cleo: Came Jonah, by Helen Brown

‘If I keep writing from my heart, I think Mum was saying it could do some good – not just for me, but for other people as well. There was something really urgent about it, too. Mum and Cleo were telling me to hurry up an finish it. They don’t want me to waste time.’
The prospect of running out of time hadn’t occurred to me before. It was something I was about to confront.

When her beloved cat Cleo died, Helen Brown vowed that she would never get another one -hers was a one-cat family. Cleo had come into their life when they needed healing, and seen them through some tough times – and some good ones, too. But a friend tells her that her old cat will, one day, choose a new one for her – the cat she is meant to have. As she battles breast cancer, Helen meets a feisty kitten called Jonah and, once again, there’s a cat in the house.

Jonah is different than Cleo. He’s a highly-stung, egocentric escape artist full of energy and happy to let his family know when he’s not pleased. At times Helen wonders what she’s let herself in for. But at other times, Jonah proves to be just the medicine she – and her family – need. Jonah is there as Helen recovers from her mastectomy, writes her first book, organises her son’s wedding, and struggles with her daughte’rs desire to become a Buddhist nun.

After Cleo Came Jonah is a warm, honest and uplifting account of family life amidst challenges and joys, with special focus on the mother-daughter relationship and the impact of facing one’s own mortality. A sequel to the best selling Cleo, readers will be delighted to spend more time with Helen and her family, in this intimate , heart-warming offering.

After Cleo Came Jonah, by Cleo Brown
Allen & Unwin, 2012
ISBN 9781742377773

This book is available in good bookstores, or online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

HipsterMattic, by Matt Granfield

Matt Granfield’s girlfriend has just broken up with him, telling him ‘I can’t be with someone who doesn’t know who they are.’. Broken hearted, he decides that she’s right – he doesn’t know who he is – and that it’s time he figured it out. In a moment of clarity he decides that the best way to figure out who he is is to become someone else.

Luckily I didn’t own a bath. If I’d had a bath I would have been crying in it, and there were so many tears and so much snot the thing would have started overflowing and I would have floated out and broken a rib on the floor.

Matt Granfield’s girlfriend has just broken up with him, telling him ‘I can’t be with someone who doesn’t know who they are.’. Broken hearted, he decides that she’s right – he doesn’t know who he is – and that it’s time he figured it out. In a moment of clarity he decides that the best way to figure out who he is is to become someone else. He’s always been a bit of a hipster – but now he embarks on a quest to become the hippest person there is – the ultimate hipster.

HipsterMattic, subtitled One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster recounts Granfield’s adventures in his quest to figure out what the ultimate is – and how he can become one. In his wryly witty first person narration Granfield takes us along as he learns to knit, sets up a market school, starts the ultimate hipster band, acquires a fixie (a fixed wheel bike) and overdoses on coffee, all in a slightly mad quest to become more hipster.

This is laugh out loud funny, with Granfield’s self-deprecating, open style making it the sort of book you want to share bits with other people. I found myself reading bits aloud regularly. But along with the humour there’s some self-discovery, with Granfield perhaps coming closer to discovering who he is – or, at the least, who he’s not.

If you’ve ever tried to be cool, or ever searched for who you really are, or perhaps just want a laugh, HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster is highly recommended.

HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster, by Matt Granfield
Allen & Unwin, 2011
ISBN 9781742377858

This book can be purchased in good bookstores, or online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

How Now Brown Frau, by Merridy Eastman

n her first book there’s a Bear in There Merridy Eastman shared her life away from stage and the small screen working as a receptionist in a brothel. Her second book Ridiculous Expectations shared her story of travelling to England for a book tour only to meet and fall in love with a handsome German named Tom. Now, in her third book, the story continues.

Right. This was it. There was no turning back now, I thought, glancing at the tall German sitting by my side as we sped down the A92 towards Munich. here began my new life in Bavaria , with a man I’d met eight months earlier on a jetty in Lymington.
‘Your thing is on inside out, he’d said then, gently touching the sleeve of my cardigan.
In her first book there’s a Bear in There Merridy Eastman shared her life away from stage and the small screen working as a receptionist in a brothel. Her second book Ridiculous Expectations shared her story of travelling to England for a book tour only to meet and fall in love with a handsome German named Tom. Now, in her third book, the story continues, with her arrival to live in Bavaria, four months pregnant and unable to speak German.

How Now Brown Frau does pick up where the second book left off, which will delight fans of the previous books, but is also self contained enough to read on its own. Eastman is forthright and funny, sharing her experiences with an honesty which is delightful, and often laugh out loud funny.

Witty, clever and true.

How Now Brown Frau, by Merridy Eastman
Allen & Unwin, 2011
ISBN9781741759754

This book is available from good bookstores, or online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

Drawn From the Heart, by Ron Brooks

If you are a parent, teacher or librarian with a love of children’s books, chances are that you are well familiar with the illustrative brilliance of Ron Brooks. As the illustrator of some of Australia’s (and the world’s) best loved picture books, including John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat , Old Pig and Fox , Brooks has captured the hearts of readers for 40 years. In Drawn from the Heart, however, Brooks shares far more than his illustration work with readers.

Reading this memoir is an intense experience. On the face of it, this is a book which traces Brooks’ life through childhood, study, marriage and raising a family, whilst also detailing the process of illustrating his various works. However, it quickly becomes clear to the reader that this is much more. This is a story into which the reader is drawn. Brooks is honest and intimate, creating a sense that he is telling the tale just over a cup of tea across a well-worn kitchen table. The reader is invited to cheer, to smile, to weep and mourn with Brooks. This is definitely not a dry-eye book.

There is lots of factual information imparted – the detail of the creation and publication process of each of Brooks’ picture books is fascinating – but at the same time you are left a real sense of Ron Brooks as a person of great intensity.

A must read for anyone with a passion for children’s books and illustration, this is also simply a wonderful read for any human being.

Drawn from the Heart: A Memoir, by Ron Brooks
Allen & Unwin, 2010
ISBN 9781742371559

This book can be purchased in good bookstores, or online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews

Snitch, as told to Jimmy Thomson

I’ve been on first name terms with some of the most notorious criminals in this country and some of the most famous policemen. I have collected money from pimps and gamblers and delivered bribes to corrupt cops. I have been shaken down by dirty cops and I have sat down with others who wouldn’t take a bribe if you offered it to them. I have seen violence you wouldn’t believe but I’ve never so much as slapped anyone myself…The Royal Commission gave me a codename. My friends called me The Inspector.

Few Aussie television shows of recent years have attracted the same kind of following as Underbelly. Based on true events in Australia’s gang underworld, it as been followed avidly, discussed over breakfast, at work, on the street. Snitch is not part of the Underbelly franchise, but will appeal to its fans. It is the first hand account of life in Kings Cross by someone who claims to have been intimately involved in the events depicted in the most recent series of the show.

”The Inspector” recounts the events to author Jimmy Thomson, giving his own perspective of what did and didn’t happen, and his own role in them. An accessible and intriguing text.

Snitch: Crooked Cops and Kings Cross Crims by the Man Who Saw it All, as told to Jimmy Thomson
Allen & Unwin, 2010

This book can be purchased online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

The Sisters Antipodes, by Jane Alison

We had the same birthday, but she was a year older, and we looked alike enough to be sisters – little girls with wavy hair and bright staring eyes, although mine were blue and hers were brown. I see us in the bath gazing at each other over sudsy water, our wrinkled feet pressed together and pushing, as music and smoke drift under the door. We don’t know that soon she’ll live with my father and I’ll live with hers, that for seven years we’ll shadow each other around the globe, that the split will form everything about us, that we’ll grow up as each other’s antipode.

Born in Australia, Jane Goodman spent her early years travelling with her family – her mother, father and older sister. But back in Canberra they met another family that was almost a mirror – a father also in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother and two little girls, almost the same ages. When the two sets of parents first had affairs and then exchanged partners, Jane and her now step-sister Jenny were thrown into a state of wordless combat for the love of their fathers, a battle which ebbed and flowed for many years.

The Sisters Antipodes is a memoir of the author’s childhood and early adulthood, focussing on the impact of the dual marriage breakup, her subsequent childhood, and her tumultuous relationship chiefly with Jenny but also with other members of the family. In parts harrowing but always compelling, this is an absorbing tale.

The Sisters Antipodes: A Memoir, by Jane Alison
Allen & Unwin, 2009

This book can be purchased online at Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

Riding the Black Cockatoo, by John Danalis

‘Well; I grew up with an Aboriginal skull on my mantelpiece.’
I said the words with a sort of worldly swagger, somehow expecting the announcement to impress my younger classmates. I might as well have unzipped my pants and flopped my penis on the table – everyone turned and stared at me with a mixture of incredulousness, disgust and horror. My worldliness withered.

As a child, John Danalis never stopped to consider why an Aboriginal skull was a fixture on his family’s mantelpiece, or even why it was considered okay to display a person’s remains in this way. But, as an adult, when he shared this piece of his past, his classmate’s reactions lead him to thinking about where the skull, which his family had named ‘Mary’, came from, and where it should now go.

In the weeks following this event, Danalis set about answering these questions, in an emotional journey which ultimately led to the skull being handed over to be returned to Mary’s country.

Riding the Black Cockatoo is a true story of one man’s journey to understanding not just a part of his own family’s story, but the story of Aboriginal people around Australia. Danalis admits to not knowing, or even having spoken with, Aboriginal people, before he began the quest to return Mary to his rightful home. But, in the process of returning Mary, Danalis is forced to explore both his own preconceptions and Australia’s history, which proves both confronting and very disturbing.

Riding the Black Cockatoo is an important book, which should be read by all Australians for a greater understanding of our history and our culture.

Riding the Black Cockatoo, by John Danalis
Allen & Unwin, 2009

This book can be purchased online at Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

Bruce & Me, by Oren Siedler

My father is a criminal; my mother is a lapsed Jew turned Buddhist hippie. Throughout my childhood I lived two lives, shuttling between them on two continents.

This is the true story of Oren Siedler. Born in the United States, when she was eight she came to live in Australia with her mother and stepfather, leaving her father behind. However, Bruce, her father, insisted on being part of Oren’s life, and so she spent much of her childhood dividing her time between living with her mother on a Buddhist retreat in Australia and living on the road with her father in America. Bruce, her father, was a criminal, making his living through scamming banks, and Oren was regularly drawn into these scams, an unwitting participant.

Bruce & Me chronicles this unconventional childhood as well as Siedler’s quest in her adult years to understand her father and her unconventional relationship with both of her parents. The story is an intriguing mix of humour, pathos and intrigue, especially when one is reminded that this is a true story.

Bruce & Me, by Oren Siedler
Random House, 2009

This book can be purchased online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.

Much Love, Jac, by Jacki Weaver

Jacki Weaver has been entertaining Australian audiences for more than forty years, ever since scoring her first big role as Cinderella at age fifteen. Gough Whitlam once referred to her as an Australian National Treasure, Les McDonald once called her a Gay Icon and the Sydney Morning Heraldcalled her a Household Name. Whether she’s any of these, Jacki Weaver has certainly achieved wide recognition and great popularity in that time, as a star of Australian stage and screen.

In Much Love, Jac she shares her life in a frank account of her ups and downs. Through her five marriages (and numerous other relationships), her professional highs and lows, personal challenges and triumphs, Weaver speaks to the reader in a chatty, natural voice which makes the reader feel she is there talking across the kitchen table. She is honest about and unapologetic for her life – she simply tells it as she remembers it, with the disclaimer that she admits that, as a memoir, there are people and events not touched on, for various reasons.

This is a highly readable memoir of a fascinating life.

Much Love, Jac, by Jacki Weaver
Allen & Unwin, 2005

No Turning Back, by E.T.W. Fulton

It was a Saturday morning, the day jobs were advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald. I scanned the ‘Positions Vacant’ and spotted ‘Wanted for Rabaul, book-keeper with Island Merchants, apply with written application today…’
‘Where is Rabaul?’ I asked Frank. ‘It’s the capital of New Guinea, I think,’ he said.

So began Ted Fulton’s lifelong love affair with Papua New Guinea, where he would spend most of the next forty years of his life as a gold miner, soldier and plantation owner. Arriving in Rabaul in his early twenties, he soon learnt that if he wanted to make his fortune, a job as a book keeper was not for him. After working a variety of jobs he eventually became a gold miner, before the second world war interrupted.

As a soldier, Ted fought in the middle east before returning to Papua New Guinea, where he was deployed behind enemy lines. When the war finished, he settled briefly back in Australia, before taking his wife and first child back to Rabaul, where he became a successful planter.

For any one with an interest in the Pacific and especially Papua New Guinea, this is a detailed account, told in a no-nonsense first person voice. Fulton is matter of fact about his recollections of the hardships of war and of life in remote jungle areas, leaving the reader to interpret some of the emotions those experienced must have engendered.

A wonderful insight into one man’s life and to the events of the times.

No Turning Back, by E. T. W. Fulton
Pandanus Books, 2005