Reviews of New Books November, 2010

The World Beneath by Cate Kennedy

Sophie’s dad left when she was a baby, and she hasn’t seen much of him in the intervening years. Now she is 16, mortified by her hippy mother and not eating very much. When Rich, her dad, gets in touch and wants to take her on a six-day hike into the Tasmanian outback, Sophie is curious enough to want to go along, and doubly motivated by the knowledge that her mother will duly flip her lid. Which she does, predictably. Sandy hates Rich for leaving all those years ago, hates his betrayal of their life together, fighting for a multitude of common causes. She hates that her daughter seems bored when she reminisces about some of the all-important marches and protests that became Sandy and Rich’s raison d’être. But Sophie soon realises that she may have swapped the frying pan for the fire, as she discovers that Rich likes to live in the past just as much as her mother. A first novel, this is a wonderful tale of family and the frequent gulf between parents and teenagers. Judging by this high standard, Cate Kennedy will definitely be an author to watch out for in the future.

Life & Laughing by Michael McIntyre

Stand-up comic Michael McIntyre wants to make it clear that this is not his autobiography, but rather his memoirs. “I think it’s from the French for ‘memories’, and that pretty much sums up what this book is going to be. A book about my French memories. No, it’s basically everything I can remember from my life. The bad news is that I don’t have a particularly good memory.” Well, at least he’s honest about it! From his oriental appearance at birth prompting some awkward questions, to his mother’s yearly birthday phone calls reminding him in excruciating detail about each and every stage of her labour and delivery, to hilarious Scrabble games with his Hungarian grandmother (who tried to claim 66 points for ‘kerritz’, her version of carrots), McIntyre is no doubt putting an even more comical spin on various events, but it works well. The son of a Canadian comedian, McIntyre discovered in his teens that he had been slow to speak as a child. “I was shocked to find that my early medical history was remarkably similar to Forrest Gump’s,” he jokes. Needless to say, that little blip didn’t last long. As you’d expect from a comedian, McIntyre doesn’t dwell on the serious for too long. Whether it’s the early death of his father, or his beloved grandmother’s refusal to accept the woman who would become his wife, or the early years on the breadline as he struggled to make it as a comic, he always ends up playing it for laughs. An entertaining read.