In Short Nonfiction

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday January 10, 2009

Reviews by Bruce Elder

THE GREAT FLETCH

By Hugh Lunn

ABC Books, 356pp, $32.95

Hugh Lunn is a natural storyteller. It was this rare skill that made Over The Top With Jim such a runaway bestseller and it is this same skill, combined with a lifelong friendship, that makes this biography of tennis star Ken Fletcher so compulsively entertaining. This is not a biography written from the recollections of others. It's a biography written by someone who Fletcher once described as "my greatest, dear, dear friend".

Lunn is never happy to follow the simple arc of a person's career and so the biography ends up being an evocation of the great Catholic-Protestant divide of the 1950s; of what it meant to be an authentic Australian larrikin at a time when tennis was played by gifted amateurs rather than highly disciplined professionals; and of the life of a working-class kid from Brisbane who, with only his talent and charm, conquered the world.

There is more than a hint of rose-tinted nostalgia but it imbues what would otherwise be an ordinary sports biography with warmth and charm.

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF MOTHERS-IN-LAW

By Luisa Dillner

Faber and Faber, 272pp, $29.95

It is a comment on society's jaundiced notion of the mother-in-law that the average reader will look at the title of this book and assume it must be full of unsavoury mother-in-law jokes. That is not the case. It is actually a serious book - "a celebration", as the subheading suggests - about mothers-in-law and, as such, it is fascinating.

It opens with an overview of the mother-in-law in history that includes the fact most readers consider Mrs Bennet in Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice a fine example of the overweening mother-in-law.

And did you know Margaret Thatcher's daughter-in-law accused the Iron Lady of "creating a 'mummy's boy' capable of regressing to a helpless child who depended on his mother to do his washing and ironing"? The image of Maggie ironing Mark's shirts while declaring war on Argentina is memorably fascinating. If you love your mother-in-law, this is a book that will warm her heart and strengthen the bond.

HOLIDAYS ON ICE

By David Sedaris

Little, Brown, 166pp, $24.99

Now that Christmas is over and the poisonous excesses of food, madness and sentimentality are still clogging your veins and sanity, this collection of David Sedaris's festive season pieces may be just the antidote you need. It is probably worth the price of the book just for Sedaris's account of playing one of Santa's elves at Macy's SantaLand.

The 42-page story is a tour de force of understatement as a comic device and Sedaris's descriptions of demented Santas, crazed elves and manic parents are not only funny but sharply accurate accounts of situations most parents have suffered. His faux Christmas letter - a litany of horrors rather than the usual array of achievements - is equally funny.

Many of these pieces have been published before but this collection expands Sedaris's original Holidays On Ice by six stories, one of which is previously unpublished. This is Sedaris at his best, which is just another way of saying it is a book of such rich humour that only a very brave person will attempt to read it on public transport.

PICK OF THE WEEK

THE LOT

By Michael Leunig

Viking, 319pp, $29.95

Most cartoonists are not particularly good writers. They communicate their observations about the world through their illustrations. Michael Leunig has never belonged to the mainstream of cartoonists. His images have frequently been enriched by poems, letters, monologues, dialogues and aphorisms. It therefore should be no surprise to admirers that this book of articles and essays - all taken from his occasional column in The Age - has not a single image of Mr Curly or a duck, apart from on the cover.

In fact, quite early in the book, Leunig writes about a duck in a piece titled All Hail Vladimir, Beloved Duck. But that is not the point. This is an exceptional, humane, idiosyncratic collection of thoughts about a rich range of topics. Leunig is never predictable. He is, for example, not happy about Bill Henson's photography, observing: "Making such images [of naked young people who are below the age of consent] seems to be his enduring preoccupation and I don't understand why a mature man would want to do such a thing, or even how he could but I am equally perplexed by the huge endorsement and honour bestowed upon him by the art establishment for producing this work."

It is typical of Leunig. Not the phoney moral outrage of the ideologues who choke the op-ed pages with their dogmatism but rather a gentle querulousness about human nature. It is so refreshing to read someone who has original things to say and who obviously spends a lot of time thinking about new and interesting ways to say them. He reflects on the modern obsession with prescriptive personal beauty in an article that opens, "Huge banners of the dictator line the freeway," and then, as the image unfolds, invites the reader to wonder who the dictator is by writing: "The dictator has youthful skin and often wears no trousers."

Leunig is a gigantic talent. This book provides an opportunity to experience Literary Leunig and the result is hugely rewarding.

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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