Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench

Acclaimed actress Judi Dench talks all things Shakespeare

What started out as a series of conversations destined for the archives at Shakespeare's Globe have turned into a book. It was actor and director Brendan O'Hea's idea to capture Judi Dench's musings on her career, specifically as a Shakespearean actress, but when the recordings were heard by a third party it was suggested they be turned into a book.

The Man Who Pays the Rent was Dench and husband Michael Williams' nickname for Shakespeare. The playwright's expansive oeuvre kept them in work. For a book based on a series of conversations, you'd expect something light and frothy. Indeed, it is that. But so much more besides. Dench shows an impressive knowledge and incredible recall of lines, passages, dialogue, poetry and plot lines from the plays. There is also a detailed consideration of character, psychology and motive. Often Dench celebrates the mystery and subtlety of Shakespeare, advising that meaning is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

A broad range of the plays are discussed – tragedies, comedies, histories and the so-called problem plays. Mini in between chapters discuss stagecraft, language and the role of critics. Dench peppers her commentary with amusing stories from her acting career – falls, stumbles, forgotten lines, wardrobe malfunctions.
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Like all wonderful books on Shakespeare, The Man Who Pays the Rent inspires the reader to return to the plays. A companionable book that mixes serious analysis with jolly, break-a-leg stories from the stage.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench. Published by Michael Joseph. $36.99

FEB24

Don't Take Your Love to Town, by Ruby Langford Ginibi

Ruby Langford Ginibi's classic memoir is a no holds barred story of pain, joy and survival

As part of its new series of First Nations Classics, University of Queensland Press is re-publishing Ruby Langford Ginibi's acclaimed memoir Don't Take Your Love to Town (1988).

Langford Ginibi, a Bundjalong woman, was born in 1934 and raised in the small New South Wales town of Bonalbo. Her mother left the family when she was six, to marry another man. By age 16 Ruby was pregnant and she would go on to have nine children by several fathers. These relationships started out good, but would eventually turn sour, ending in either neglect or abuse. Langford Ginibi, in wiser old age, would swear off men, hence the book's title. Tragically, three of her children died, causing her years of grief – and a drinking problem that she finally kicked.

It's hard to understate how extraordinary a memoir this is. Langford Ginibi, viewed as a character on the page, is a mix of Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Brecht's Mother Courage, a woman of irrepressible life force and a tough survivor. She is a workhorse providing for her brood, living rough in outback tents and killing her own food. She brawls and drinks, would give you the shirt off her back if asked and raises a glass to life despite its endless hardships, especially for First Nations people.

At 400 pages long, there is never a dull moment in Don't Take Your Love to Town, as it chronicles a life lived to the fullest. Despite the vein of pain and suffering that runs through the book, Langford Ginibi is also very funny. She has an ironic turn of phrase and delightfully blunt sense of humour that gives her story heart and humanity.

An incredible memoir, an incredible life lived. Indeed, a classic.

Don't Take Your Love to Town, by Ruby Langford Ginibi. Published by Queensland University Press. $19.99

MAY23

Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani, by Behrouz Boochani

A selection of Behrouz Boochani's writing from his time detained on Manus Island.

Behrouz Boochani fled his native Iran in 2013, his work as a journalist having brought him the unwelcome attention of the authorities. He was on his way to Australia via Indonesia when the boat he was travelling on was intercepted by the Royal Australian Navy. He was detained on Manus Island from 2013 until 2019, when he managed to travel to New Zealand for a literary event and was subsequently granted refugee status.

Freedom, Only Freedom is a collection of Boochani's prison writings, translated and edited by Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoubi. The book is divided into ten parts, covering key events of Boochani's time in detention and also addressing philosophical and political questions regarding Australia's asylum seeker policies. Each part finishes with two pieces by different writers – academics, activists, journalists and supporters. These pieces aim to give context and perspective to Boochani's writing. While these contributions are interesting, they tend to be densely academic in tone. 

Boochani wrote the majority of the work presented here on his phone – an amazing feat of determination and commitment. He covers all aspects of detention – the constant humiliation, the hunger, dirt, filth, squalor, poor health of detainees and lack of appropriate services. The aim of detention, it seems, is to psychologically break down detainees until they are mere shells. One man whose only pleasure was playing his guitar had it confiscated. The official reason was the strings were considered a suicide risk. Despite so much misery and indignity, Boochani strives to show the humanity and hopes of his fellow detainees. If prison life offers only sadness and desperation, there are still the beauties of nature: birds, sea, sunshine. When all promise and dignity is stripped from the individual, nature allows detainees to still feel themselves as human.
Another aspect of detention the book addresses is the political. Boochani asks why Australia has chosen such a cruel and merciless system. Does it have roots in our colonial past, our former White Australia policy? Manus and Naru are like a gulag, where people are disappeared. Boochani sees his writing as a history project, a secret history that Australians don't want to confront.

“This writing that comes out of Manus is the unoffical history of Australia, a history that will never be authorised by the government.”

Freedom, Only Freedom proves to be a unique and critical document chronicling Australia's detention policy. It will surely only grow in status and relevance in the years to come.

Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani, by Behrouz Boochani. Published by Bloomsbury. $32.99

DEC22

Readme.txt: A Memoir, by Chelsea Manning

 

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning has written a compelling and insightful memoir.

Chelsea Manning, a former US soldier and intelligence analyst, leaked some 700,000 classified documents pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She felt an increasing cognitive dissonance at how both wars were portrayed at home, compared to the reality on the ground. At first she tried to get what she knew published through mainstream media channels, anonymously approaching journalists and editors. Little interest was shown, so she decided on the bold plan of simply releasing all the documents online. Wikileaks soon made a name for itself in publishing the leaked documents.

Much has been written about Manning's motives. To set the record straight, she has decided to write her own story. Too many times, Manning writes, she has been held up as a figure head for certain political movements. As the pages of Readme.txt reveal, she sees herself more as a transparency activist, someone striving to put the truth before the public.

Born Bradley Manning in Oklahoma, she experienced a tough upbringing with a violent father and alcoholic mother. As a teenager she spent a period homeless, living on the streets and hustling for food and board. Desperately poor, with no prospects and trying to gain acceptance from her father, she decided to join the army. Since childhood Manning had been grappling with gender dysphoria and she hoped the army would somehow resolve these issues. Despite this, the dysphoria remained, with the need for secrecy influencing career decisions that would see her eventually stationed in Iraq.

Readme.txt is written in crisp, concise prose, neatly putting Manning's endlessly fascinating story into a satisfyingly digestible form. She claims to have always been a voracious and wide reader, and a sharp intelligence comes through in the text. Her story is one of surviving extreme psychological duress during seven years of prison, especially her early years of incarceration, where it was clear the authorities wanted to mete out the toughest possible punishment. Despite this, she managed to advocate for herself as a trans woman and receive appropriate gender treatment. Manning is a complex and fascinating character. She comes across as both incredibly vulnerable and resolutely strong. A gifted computer technician and analyst, she's also a passionate activist, someone ready to face jail for her beliefs. A trans woman who has had to fight for her identity.
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Chelsea Manning is certainly a polarising figure, but one who can't be ignored. Readme.txt deserves a wide readership.  

Readme.txt: A Memoir, by Chelsea Manning. Published by Jonathan Cape. $35

DEC22

Take Me to Paris, Johnny, by John Foster

A heartbreaking AIDS memoir.

John Foster was an historian, specialising in German history. For many years he taught at Melbourne University. His home was North Melbourne, where he lived with his partner Juan Céspedes. Foster was a practising Anglican and a parishioner at St Mary's. He rented a flat from the church in Howard Street, North Melbourne. (Residents of the inner-city suburb will recognise many locations and streets.)

In 1981, on a trip to New York, John met Juan and they enjoyed a long distance relationship for several years, until their battle with the Australian immigration department started to yield results and Juan moved to Australia. It was the early days of AIDS and information was slowly emerging. There had been a disturbing rise in what were called “gay cancers”. New York was an area where such mysterious illnesses seemed to be proliferating.

For many years, Juan had complained of stomach problems and had cast around for various cures to his condition. The idea that it could be AIDS was something the couple thought a remote possibility, but too terrible to contemplate. As Juan's health deteriorated, the possibility had to be confronted. By the time Juan found out he was HIV positive, he was living in Australia. The cherished dream of building a life together started crumbling apart as John took on a carer's role.

AIDS is a slow and cruel death. Take Me to Paris, Johnny is candid and matter-of-fact about how the disease relentlessly ravages the body. Juan was once a vibrant and energetic dancer, but near the end he weighed under 40 kilograms. He was only thirty-three when he died.

This is a lyrical yet unsentimental memoir that documents not only the illness itself, but social attitudes and the lack of legal protections for gay couples. There are, however, bright rays of sunshine in the support John and Juan received from St Mary's and the small community of friends they belonged to, but unbearable pain in the hopelessness of Juan's condition.

John Foster died of AIDS in 1994, the year after Take Me to Paris, Johnny was published. John and Juan are buried together at Kew cemetery.

A heartbreaking story told with restraint, humanity and dignity.

Take Me to Paris, Johnny, by John Foster

AUG 2022

Train Lord: The Astonishing True Story of One Man's Journey to Getting His Life Back on Track, by Oliver Mol

 
A successful young writer describes a personal season in hell.

Oliver Mol found a degree of early success with his debut memoir, Lion Attack! He was broadly feted and received the Scribe Non Fiction Prize for Young Writers. Yet it was this very success that precipitated a chronic, 10-month migraine. Depressed and not knowing what to do with himself, Mol took on a job as a train guard. If he couldn't read or write, at least there was the possibility of staying employed and useful.

Train Lord is not so much a memoir about his work as a train guard, although there are plenty of entertaining workplace vignettes interspersed throughout, but more a story of mental breakdown. Mol suffered low self-esteem and depression. It's tempting to surmise that his vaulting ambition as a writer somehow backfired into a crisis of confidence: his migraine affliction made it painful to look at screens, read books or write.

What recommends Train Lord is Mol's heartbreaking honesty. He's clearly suffered a season in hell and has managed to put his experiences on paper. The writing is plain and direct, yet haunting and melancholy. Anyone who struggles with their mental health may find a friend in this book.

Train Lord: The Astonishing True Story of One Man's Journey to Getting His Life Back on Track, by Oliver Mol. 

JULY 2022

The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody

 

A crowd pleasing transgender memoir.

Cadance Bell grew up in Mudgee, New South Wales. Hers is your usual story of growing up in country Australia – trips to the local fish and chip shop, hunting expeditions with your father – except for one thing. Cadance had a frightening secret. Born a boy and named Benjamin Lynch, she knew that something was wrong. Her male body, and all the cultural expectations that go with being a boy, didn't fit. She felt seriously out of whack. Cadance tried to right the wrongs of her male body by secretly buying women's clothing and wearing bras underneath her blokey clobber. She would keep stashes of women's clothes in hidden bags, terrified that someone would find out. Shame, guilt, secrecy, self-loathing. All these emotions would drive her into the arms of a drug habit to try to dull the pain and make life bearable. Finally the dark clouds started to break and Cadance found a way out. She started to transition. It wasn't easy. Most difficult of all was finding acceptance from her parents. While they did struggle with her identity, they eventually came round.

The above may make The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody sound like a misery memoir, but it's actually a boisterous, rollicking, laugh out loud ride through  working class Australia. Cadance Bell has a magic gift for capturing personalities in their true vernacular. Her dialogue leaps off the page and shakes you about. The portraits of her knock-about parents – her mother, a  tough-as-nails nurse who's seen it all and her father, a mine worker – are unforgettable. The various snapshots of growing up in rural Australia resonate as unmistakably authentic. This may be a trans memoir, but readers will see themselves and their family in its pithy descriptions of Australian life.
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Ultimately, The All of It is a funny, big-hearted memoir of growing up Australian, one that also deftly explains the pain and mental anguish of feeling you don't belong in your body. An absolute winner. 

The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody, by Cadance Bell

JUNE 2022

Ten Steps to Nanette, by Hannah Gadsby

 

The stand up comic shows herself to be a formidable writer.

Hannah Gadsby's fame now stretches the world over, but her unpropitious beginnings were in the north Tasmanian town of Smithton. As described in Ten Steps to Nanette, the northern half of Tasmania was rampant with homophobia before the gay law reforms of the early nineties. It was then unremarkable for major public figures to stoke fear and violence against gay people. Gadsby chronicles this terrible time in considerable detail. 

While Nanette presents as a memoir, it's a multi-faceted, left-of-field one. Gadsby depicts the struggle of growing up queer in a hostile environment and the trauma that ensues. She also examines the art and psychology of comedy, how tension is built and released in an audience. At one point Gadsby confesses to being able to play her audience like an instrument. Finally, Nanette works as a confessional, delving deeply into Gadsby's troubled psyche and then resurfacing victorious, having subdued many personal demons. There's a good deal of therapy and working through problems in these pages.

Fans of Hannah Gadsby won't be disappointed with this intelligent, perceptive and often very funny memoir. A substantial work of autobiography with not a word wasted.

Ten Steps to Nanette, by Hannah Gadsby

April 2022

Unknown: A Refugee's Story, by Akuch Kuol Anyieth

 

A compassionate and candid memoir about the South Sudanese refugee experience.

Akuch Kuol Anyieth spent a large part of her childhood in the Kakuma refugee camp, located in the North-western region of Kenya. In  her memoir, Unknown: A Refugee's Story, she details the poverty, violence, danger and desperation of living for almost a decade in Kakuma. (In South Sudanese culture, names are sometimes selected to reflect the circumstances surrounding a person's birth. "Akuch" means "unknown" or "I don't know", signifying the author's birth during a time of uncertainty and war.) There were times of the day you didn't walk out alone, for fear of being abducted and raped. Or worse, killed. Food was always scarce, sanitation poor and people's mental health precarious. The UN promised food and protection, but could never deliver these basic human rights. Life in the camp was one of constant struggle.

The second half of Unknown chronicles the family's experiences in Melbourne as migrants.  Akuch's mother, a formidable force despite many limitations,  moved heaven and earth to get her family to Australia. In 2005 they arrived – two brothers, Gai and Anyieth, and sister Atong. Language difficulties and cultural differences meant the family struggled to lay down stable roots in Australia. Anyieth's elder brother, nicknamed Dragon due to his volatile nature, took to drink, drugs and street fighting, causing immense suffering and heartache for the family. A younger brother, Gai, also found adjusting to Australia difficult and took to the streets. (Thankfully, both brothers eventually found stability in their lives and settled down.) Meanwhile, Akuch threw herself into study and work, determined to succeed academically and financially, but also to help members of her community overcome the trauma they had experienced.

Unknown is a remarkable memoir. Akuch Anyieth lays out the horrible reality of life in a refugee camp and the difficulties of settling into a new country. Australian bureaucracy can be complex and daunting to deal with, and ingrained racist attitudes make life difficult for South Sudenese refugees. The sections discussing race are informative, giving the reader first hand insights into how people with darker skin are treated.

Besides being a bracing memoir of an extraordinary life, Unknown is also deeply compassionate. It asks us to suspend our quick judgements on troubled South Sudenese youth until we know the complicated background story of war, displacement and trauma.  

April 2022

Fourteen: My Year of Darkness, and the Light That Followed, by Shannon Molloy

In this deeply personal and often harrowing story, journalist Shannon Molloy tells of a year of intense homophobic bullying he experienced during high school.

The time is the year 2000. The AIDS crisis is just in the rear view mirror and marriage equality is a long way off. At school, rampant homophobia is the norm. No one questions the prerogative of boys to beat and bully anyone they think is gay. Being an effeminate boy – marked out by walk, hand gestures and voice – is a red light to bullies. Daily abuse, humiliations and intermittent beatings are to be expected by the victim. To make matters worse, teachers, principals, counselors and religious instructors never call out this homophobia, letting it go unremarked.

Shannon Molloy grew up in the seaside town of Yeppoon, located in Central Queensland and attended an all-boys Catholic school. Fourteen chronicles one year in Molloy's life, the age of fourteen. It's a year of unremitting hell, saved only by the support of a small group of close friends. It's staggering to read of the total lack of school support for someone who is clearly being abused on a daily basis. When an older boys tries to sexually abuse Shannon, figuring he's gay and therefore can be raped, Shannon manages to escape, only to be captured again by a teacher patrolling in her car, who promptly returns him to school. No protocols are in place to allow him to safely explain what had happened. In another harrowing scene Shannon is told to go and see the school counselor. Ostensibly the reason for the meeting is to come up with a strategy to stop the bullying. The counselor goes on to tell Shannon that he has a gay walk and therefore the bullying is his own fault.

Things get so bad that Shannon starts plotting an escape. It's extraordinary that a young man, in the care of a school, should have to think seriously about options for getting out, as a matter of desperate urgency. To remain becomes increasingly untenable, even if most of the adults around him can't see it.

Now a News Limited journalist, Shannon Molloy has written an essential document of the times. This is a book of searing honesty and palpable pain, making clear why school bullying programs are so vital. Read this book to understand the sense of shame and humiliation that goes with being a victim of homophobia.

Fourteen: My Year of Darkness, and the Light That Followed, by Shannon Molloy. Simon & Schuster. $29.99

First published at northmelbournebooks.com.au March 2020

Calypso, by David Sedaris

David Sedaris’s new collection will thrill fans and non-fans alike.

Open any David Sedaris book and you know what you’re going to get: off beat observations, wacky overheard dialogue, briskly drawn portraits and plenty of Sedaris’s trademark wit. So with a new David Sedaris book, there’s minimal chance of disappointment. 

In this new collection of sketches and essays, Sedaris concentrates mostly on his family – especially his sisters, with whom he seems to get along best. His father, now approaching his mid-nineties, also makes plenty of appearances. Deceased family members - his mother, who died thirty years ago, and his youngest sister, Tiffany, who committed suicide - also preoccupy a lot of Sedaris’s writing. Besides the family portraits, there are essays on politics, the mangling of the English language and the favourite expressions of angry car drivers. 

Overall, the tone of the book is a kind of meditation on middle age, mixed with a gallows humour on the looming indignities of old age. There’s not a whole lot to look forward to, so you may as well laugh.

I finished Calypso in two days. It was so addictive I couldn’t stop reading. And I laughed out loud several times. Sedaris holds a mirror up to his life, warts and all, and it’s still a cathartic experience to live vicariously through his joys, anxieties and day-to-day struggles.

Calypso, by David Sedaris. Published by Little, Brown. RRP: $29.99

Review by Chris Saliba

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In the Days of Rain, by Rebecca Stott

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Rebecca Stott's memoir of her father and the turmoil of growing up in the Exclusive Brethren is fascinating and deeply moving. 

Rebecca Stott is an English academic and novelist.  She was raised in the Exclusive Brethren, a Christian sect, until about the age of six or seven.  Her Scottish great-grandfather, David Fairbairn Stott, joined the Exclusive Brethren at the turn of the 20th century and the family stayed on for four generations. The Stotts left the Exclusive Brethren in the 1970s when their leader, James Taylor Junior, was caught in a notorious sex scandal. Taylor had actually taken the Christian sect in a more extreme, puritanical direction. Stott refers to the Exclusive Brethren throughout most of the book as a "cult".

When Stott's father, Roger, lay dying of cancer in 2007, he was filled with an urgency to write his memoirs. He feverishly started, but found writing about the 1960s difficult. This was the period when the Exclusive Brethren became more extreme. Stott's father even went so far as to liken them to the Nazis for their totalitarian control techniques. He died before he could finish writing his story, but asked his daughter, Rebecca, to finish it.

In the introduction to In the Days of Rain, Stott writes that she was frequently asked what it was like growing up in the Exclusive Brethren. The problem with this question was that you could never give a simple answer. To honour her father's wishes and go some way to explaining what it was like in the Exclusive Brethren, Stott has written a dual memoir, one of her father and herself. It's a gripping and moving story, beautifully told, full of tragedy and hard truths.

The story starts in Scotland, with Stott's great-grandfather, the first to join the Exclusive Brethren. They were then more of a strict Protestant church, rather than the cult they turned into in the 1960s, but one nevertheless that frequently broke off into factions, fighting over doctrinal interpretations of the Bible.  Scottish seaside towns where these arguments took hold would find their small number of residents in locked battle, refusing to talk to each other.

Stott has done much research and gives a well fleshed out family history, with special attention paid to family members who had it particularly tough. One aunt was put into an institution simply because she had epilepsy and was considered too "wilful". The church's attitudes to women was one of young Rebecca's major frustrations. Why didn't women get sick of being silenced and speak up? The attitude of the church was that women were to be seen and not heard. Women did what they were told, their opinions were not welcomed.

A frightening tool the church used against members was known as "withdrawing from". If a member had been found to have transgressed some rule or strayed from the church's teachings they could be withdrawn from. It meant putting people into total isolation. If all your social networks are within the church, indeed, if your whole family is within the church, being withdrawn from could mean disaster. Many committed suicide or went mad. One man murdered his family, then hung himself. 

As you would expect, the church brainwashed members over many years, even lifetimes. Stott grew up terrified of Satan, believing she wasn't good enough to be taken up to Heaven when the end times came, and spent much time wondering how she would survive on earth among the less pure like herself. A judging and terrifying God watched everything, and you had to look out for signs of God's wrath.

Roger Stott, Rebecca's father, who makes up the central focus of this memoir, is a complex and tortured character. A great lover of literature and cinema, a hard drinker and occasional actor, Stott paints him as almost Shakespearean, half Faltstaff and half Lear. At six foot four in height and weighing some 200 kilos, he also reminded her of an Old Testament prophet, a larger than life character. Roger Stott's later life descended into farce and tragedy. He had affairs, left his wife, drank too much, moved into shabby lodgings, became addicted to roulette, was busted for embezzling money and did jail time.

Through all of this Stott describes her love-hate relationship with her father. He would take her to the theatre and discuss art and literature, but she would get angry with him for his many betrayals. They had much in common, their tastes in books, philosophy and history, but their family past in the Exclusive Brethren had caused irreparable damage.

Rebecca Stott tells the uncomfortable story of her family and her father with honesty and understanding. It's a psychologically complex history, a life that's been lived at the extremes, but which has finally moved to the centre. In the Days of Rain does what literature does best, by trying to work out life's unfathomable mysteries, contradictions and tragedies. This is literature as therapy. Readers will find themselves drawn to this very human story of a flawed family history and its fallible patriarch.

In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult, by Rebecca Stott. Published by Fourth Estate. ISBN: 9780008209179 RRP: $27.99

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The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between, by Hisham Matar

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Novelist Hisham Matar's memoir about his father, a political prisoner kidnapped in 1990 but presumed murdered, is harrowing yet courageously dignified.

Hisham Matar was born to Libyan parents. His father, Jaballa Matar, was a resistance member to Muammar Qaddafi's brutal dictatorship. The family lived in exile, but Jaballa was kidnapped in 1990 and imprisoned in Qaddafi's notorious Abu Salim prison. Hisham Matar never saw his father again.

The Return, a memoir, is part detective story and part agonising anatomy of one man's grief. Every page is full with sadness and suffering. The book really takes you under the writer's skin. It talks not only of one man's tragedy, the of the many who opposed Qaddafi and paid the terrible price. Hisham Matar had many family members, especially cousins, who were political prisoners, held in dire conditions for up to twenty years. For example, each prison cell had a loudspeaker that played political propaganda everyday, from 6am to 12pm, at an unbearably loud volume.

Hisham Matar has spent most of his life living in England, his adopted country, where he works as a writer and novelist. You would think England would offer a degree of safety, but Matar often felt unsafe, especially as the government of Tony Blair improved relations with Qaddafi's regime. Some of the book's strangest and almost unbelievable sections are when Matar makes contact with Qaddafi's son, Seif el-Islam, trying to get information on the fate of his father. (Seif el-Islam claims Tony Blair as a friend and has been hosted by the royal family at Buckingham Palace).

This is a deeply moving memoir about lives that are ruined forever by totalitarian politics.

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between, by Hisham Matar. Published by Viking. ISBN 9780241966280 RRP: $24.99

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The Princess Diarist, by Carrie Fisher

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist reveals the actress at her most vulnerable.

Recently while having some work done on her home, Carrie Fisher came across some old diaries she'd kept while working on the first Star Wars film. Fisher was 19 at the time, living in London where the film was being shot and generally trying to make it as a teenager in an adult's world. The diaries, however, don't detail much, if anything, of the day-to-day shooting of Star Wars ("that little space film"). Fisher at the time was having an affair with Harrison Ford, who was still married.

The book is presented in three parts. The first section describes those events of forty years ago from the perspective of today. This is probably the strongest part of the memoir as Fisher writes about the terrible shyness and awkwardness of being a teenager and unsure if you're really wanted. In this case, she wasn't. Harrison Ford intended to go back to his wife; the affair would only be a three month fling. Even knowing this, the young Carrie was plunged into all sorts of emotional turmoil.

The middle section of the book consists of excerpts from the diaries. As you'd expect, they're all intensely personal. You almost feel like you shouldn't be reading them, but then console yourself that you have the permission of the author.

The third section describes life after Star Wars and what impact the film has had on Fisher. We learn about the perils of the Star Wars convention circuit, signing autographed photos for fans. It doesn't make you envy the famous!

Tender and sad, but also shot through with Carrie Fisher's trademark humour, The Princess Diarist demonstrates that fame is not all that it's cracked up to be. Filming one of the greatest films of all time proved to be a time of exquisite pain for one of its most famous stars.

The Princess Diarist, by Carrie Fisher. Published by Bantam Press. ISBN: 9780593077573 RRP: $34.99

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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of A Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D Vance

Staff review by Chris Saliba

An intimate portrait of a troubled and complex working class family which doubles as an eye-opening look into the heart of poor, white America. 

J. D Vance's family originated from the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. Of Scots-Irish descent, the Vances are proud to describe themselves as “hillbillies”. White, poor and working class, the family moved to the industrial midwest and settled in Midtown, Ohio. They were economic migrants in search of factory work, trying to improve their fortunes. Despite aspiring to a middle-class lifestyle, the Vances held tight to their hillbilly heritage. Through a mix of hard work and some good luck, J.D Vance managed to study law at Yale (an unheard of achievement for someone of his background) and find a well paying job. His contemporaries weren't so lucky. Far too many found themselves permanently on welfare, fathering children they abandoned, chronically addicted to drugs or in jail.

Hillbilly Elegy is written as a personal memoir, but it can also be read as a piece of cultural anthropology. It's the voice of disenfranchised white working class America, written with calmness, elegance and clarity. By any stretch, J.D Vance had a terrible upbringing. His mother was a drug addict who couldn't maintain a stable relationship. The young J.D had no reliable father figure when he was growing up. His one saving grace was his grandmother (“Mamaw”) and grandfather (“Papaw”) who stepped in to look after him at an early age. Vance describes them as both loyal and devoted, yet tough, frightening (to outsiders at least) and borderline crazy. They carried guns and weren't afraid to threaten people with them. Quick to take offense, they had a strict honor code. These qualities could be good, offering strong protection (at one point Vance writes “Hillbilly justice never failed me”), but there were also serious contradictions. The honor code meant their women were not to be demeaned in any way by outsiders, but hillbilly culture could be horribly sexist. They'd shoot if a bad word was said about a mother or a sister, but the men thought nothing of cheating on their wives and treating them poorly.

The portraits of Mamaw and Papaw are quite extraordinary, like something out a classic Southern novel by Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers. Their talk is often coarse and full of profanities. They don't mince words. But there's also a lot of humour and warmth. Vance reveals nice subtleties about their characters, like when Papaw would secretly cry about things that upset him, or Mamaw would show her vulnerability, despite her tough-as-nails facade.

A turning point came in young J.D's life when he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. It was the Marines that taught him discipline and self-belief. During his four year stint he kept in constant contact with Mamaw. She wrote him everyday, telling him to believe in himself and maintaining her solid support. If J.D hadn't had his grandparents and later the Marines, he would no doubt have fallen by the wayside like other poor whites. This is the whole point of Hillbilly Elegy, to give an intimate portrait of poor working class lives, from someone who has lived it, who knows and still loves the culture and its people, despite their manifest faults. This is a book that elicits sympathy and understanding for people very different from ourselves.

What's the take-away then for those wanting to understand the current state of American politics? Trust in Barack Obama is low amongst working class whites. Many think he's a Muslim who wasn't born in America. They see an urbane, polished politician with a neutral accent who has nothing to say to them. If some fault can be laid at the feet at politics, it's that politicians like Barack Obama didn't reach out enough. The main problems, however, might be intractable. There is a deep pessimism amongst working class whites. They have simply given up hope and prefer to blame government and the media for their problems. If there is a way out, Vance believes working class whites will have to drag themselves up and take more responsibility. This is no easy task as the problems facing these communities are deeply entrenched, from generation to generation. For example, Vance says he grew up thinking that excelling at school work was demeaning because it was for “sissies”. These sorts of attitudes are hard to shift.

Hillbilly Elegy makes for absorbing reading. This is a memoir written with great maturity and self-reflection, by someone still very young (Vance is thirty-one). If you want to understand the mindset of a whole class of Americans, then this is indispensable reading.  

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of A Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. Published by HarperCollins ISBN: 9780008220556  RRP: $32.99

The Priests, by James M. Miller

Staff review by Chris Saliba

James Miller's memoir The Priests is a tragic and heartbreaking personal story of sexual abuse and its devastating consequences. 

James Miller grew up in Sydney during the Seventies. It was a time of sun, surf and good friends. Academically gifted and confident, the young Miller had the world before him. In 1978, all that would change.  At the age of fifteen he was sent to Pius X secondary College. The Principal was Father Thomas Brennan.  A cold, dry and aloof man, he ran a school obsessed with following petty rules. When James Miller refused to wear a belt to school, he was brought in for a private meeting with Father Brennan. It was during this first meeting that Brennan sexually abused the young Miller. There would be two more incidents of sexual abuse before Miller gained enough courage to flatly refuse seeing the Principal on his own.

No one else would learn of the abuse, except for Brennan’s school deputy, Father Helferty. The two men would pressure Miller over many years to keep quiet about the abuse.  Miller would have liked to put things behind him, but unfortunately he found himself being continually drawn into Brennan’s orbit. He married his school sweetheart, Kate, only to find out her family was actually related to Brennan. The hated abuser would be present at family functions. Then in later years, when Brennan was being investigated, Miller would find himself approached by his former Principal and deputy, asking him to remain silent.

The Priests explains in simple, direct language how young, vulnerable boys are sexually molested by those in authority. The book does an exceptional job of taking the reader through all the tortured psychological states that the abused experiences. In some ways, Miller was fortunate in that he was a more assertive character as a young man and could fight off Brennan’s perverse advances. But on the whole he suffered inordinately. His relationships were disastrous and he lived in a constant worry about the abuse being discovered. A successful solicitor, with a great career, Miller eventually suffered a full blown mental breakdown in his fifties. He lost everything and became homeless.

This is a tragic and heart breaking story, with no happy ending. The Priests gives a deeply disturbing self-portrait from a victim, still barely coping with life almost forty years after the initial abuse took place.

The Priests, by James M. Miller. Published by Finch Publishing. ISBN:  9781925048667  RRP: $34.99

(Release date 1st August 2016)

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The Lonely City, by Olivia Laing

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Olivia Laing's consoling and sympathetic new book looks at how outsiders carve out a life for themselves in big cities.

When writer and critic Olivia Laing found herself living alone in a series of apartments in New York, she was plunged into a near despairing loneliness. To find consolation, she started looking at art and reading literature around the subject. The result is The Lonely City, eight poignant chapters looking at a range of outsider artists, writers and thinkers, most of them New Yorkers.

The book starts with the painter Edward Hopper, discussing his paintings of solitary figures in city settings. Laing also examines Hopper the man, his long and somewhat turbulent marriage, and finds a strangely lonely and isolated artist.

The next chapter dives into the Warhol scene of the 1960s. In Andy Warhol Laing finds a lonely man ahead of his time. Unable to sustain particularly deep relationships with others Warhol  distanced himself with the use of technology. He filmed and recorded everyone, but remained numbly uninvolved. Interestingly, Laing spends quite a bit of time building up a sympathetic portrait of Valerie Solanis, writer of the notorious SCUM Manifesto. She finds here a deeply isolated character, someone with a history of abuse. Clearly mentally ill, she famously shot Andy Warhol in 1968, almost killing him.

Laing is particularly fascinated with New York gay culture, especially the period during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. This is perhaps the most affecting part of the book, where Laing describes the time in the early eighties when no one knew how the virus was spread. Shunned gay men  with the disease died in horribly lonely circumstances. Laing looks at this period a lot through the art of gay artist David Wojnarowicz and to a lesser extent singer Klaus Nomi. (Laing confesses herself to be a gay man trapped in a woman’s body.)

The last person to be profiled is early internet pioneer Josh Harris. This is a fascinating chapter, featuring some shrewd social analysis, looking at how the net is isolating people. In the late nineties, Josh Harris used his wealth to create somewhat bizarre communal living experiments, the most famous of which was called “Quiet: We Live in Public”. It was Orwellian surveillance gone mad (if that’s possible). Participants agreed to have every aspect of their lives filmed while living in an underground compound. Even the toilets had cameras. The results were fairly predictable, with everyone suffering near mental collapses. Laing says that Joshua Harris was ahead of his time because he could see social media coming and knew it would have deleterious psychological effects. Yearning connection, yet unable to deal with the unpredictable nature of our fellow humans, we seek a safe distance from them by hiding behind the Internet. This is now becoming the social norm, living our lives online, every aspect documented for public consumption and comment.

This is a fascinating and insightful book that deals not so much with loneliness, although that’s a big part of it, as with outsider personalities and damaged misfits. Laing’s approach is always humane and sympathetic, even when writing about clearly troublesome characters, such as Valerie Solanis. The Lonely City takes the reader into uncomfortable territory, but is well worth the journey.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, by Olivia Laing. Published by Canongate. ISBN: 9781782111238 RRP: $34.99

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On Writing, Charles Bukowski

Staff review by Chris Saliba

This collection of Bukowski’s letters on the subject of writing crackle with fire, rage and wit.

The title is a slight misnomer. On Writing is not really a book of Bukowski’s musings on the art of writing. In fact, he would have scorned the idea (he knocked back a job teaching creative writing). What you get here is a jagged collection of Bukowski’s letters to friends, writers and editors in which he rants and raves about how bad the state of literature is. The letters aren’t reproduced in total, only the sections that deal with books, writers and literature. Hence the rather rough and gritty feel of the book. To my mind this doesn’t work so bad, considering Bukowski’s style.

Bukowski’s main gripe is about the inauthenticity of much contemporary writing. He complains that it is mannered and artificial, too concerned with style and perfect sentence structure. Writers are in it more for the fame than anything else, Bukowski accuses. They are careerists. The main problem with modern writers is that they don’t have anything to actually write about. They haven’t lived, haven’t experienced the dark side of life, whereas Bukowski spent decades working low paid jobs, hung out with lowlifes and drank too much. Contemporary successful writers, he says, lead lives that are too cosy.

There is no denying Bukowski’s passion on this subject in On Writing. His letters crackle with fire and anger. He made a point of keeping himself distant from other writers and genuinely hated literary cliques. His constant banging on about the importance of getting down on the page life’s painful, ugly experiences, shows how vitally important the truth was to him. As he writes, “Writing is only the result of what we have become day by day over the years.” While there’s a lot of anger and range in On Writing, Bukowski can also be very funny, in his typically coarse way.

This is a brutal, tough collection of letters that should be read by any aspiring writer. There is much to disagree and wrestle with, but Bukowski’s key lesson that truth and purpose makes books live is one that sometimes gets forgotten.

On Writing, by Charles Bukowski. Published by Canongate. ISBN: 9781782117223 RRP: $32.99

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Trans: A Memoir, by Juliet Jacques

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Juliet Jacques describes her transition from male to trans woman. Trans: A Memoir proves to be an original mix of sexual politics and personal story that is hard to put down.

Trans: A Memoir chronicles the transition of British journalist and writer Juliet Jacques from man to trans woman. In 2010 she wrote a regular blog for the Guardian about her experiences which was later longlisted for The Orwell Prize.

It is difficult to pigeonhole Trans into any one particular category. In part that’s due to Jacques herself, an intellectually and emotionally complex person. The book mixes a confessional style -  personal disclosures of depression and alienation - with radical left politics. It’s almost like reading an earnest 1970s Marxist treatise, written by someone suffering gender dysphoria. This may make the book sound a little stodgy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Jacques gets the balance right between the personal and the political, ensuring every page is interesting and insightful.   

What makes Trans so compelling is how the author analyses her experiences through the prism of music, film, literature, history and the fractured reflection that popular culture mirrors back. Jacques’ critiques of the depiction of transgendered people in film is an especial eye opener.

There are plenty of other intriguing discussions of how gender is portrayed in music and film, from The Smiths to the films of Andy Warhol. Seeing the world through the eyes of a transgender woman is an eye-opening experience. Most disturbing is the constant barrage of verbal male abuse and men thinking they can rudely proposition you if you’re trans. There’s a horrible simmering violence that is directed towards the body of the trans woman.

Even though Jacques is a young writer, in her early thirties, her style is accomplished and mature. She has clearly spent many years immersing herself in a broad range of challenging literature (her first book, published in her twenties, was on the writer and Orwell contemporary, Rayner Heppenstall). While Trans may deal with the agonies of gender dysphoria, intellectually it is very assured.

A revelatory and original memoir that lets you see life from a trans woman’s perspective. It’s hard to believe that a book this unique will come along again any time soon.

Trans: A Memoir, by Juliet Jacques. Published by Verso. ISBN: 9781784784171  RRP: $29.99

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Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Journalist and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates paints an unsettling portrait of what it’s like to be a black man in America today

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American journalist who writes about African-American issues. Between the World and Me is a 150 page work of epistolary non-fiction, written to his 14-year-old son, Samori. It mixes autobiography, history and cultural theory, with its main themes being institutionalised violence against the black body and a powerful critique of American democracy and free market economics.  He derisively calls such notions of American democracy and  economic freedom ‘the Dream’. And while officially the law might say that African-Americans have been emancipated, the reality is that the weight of history - slavery, racism, violence - still bears down, its influence felt today. Black men are still murdered in the street and the law seems unable to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Coates has an eloquence when describing how racism, violence, capitalism worked together to create a mythical paradise:

“The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits of the American garden.”

There is much to take away from this insightful essay, especially for non-American readers who want to know what the African-American experience is like. Coates very much imbues his writing with great sensitivity, with an almost bruised feeling, painting a melancholy portrait of what it’s like to be an outsider in your own country. The only negative is that the language is quite florid, which can hamper accessibility to the author’s ideas. There were passages where I wondered if I really understood what he was saying. The words can create a bit of a fog at times.

That criticism aside, Between the World and Me provides a valuable, if deeply unsettling portrait of what it’s like to be a black man in America today.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Published by Text. ISBN: 9781925240702 RRP: $27.99

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