Life Begins At.....
Issue link: http://ebook.aprs.com.au/i/32324
BOOK REVIEWS Waltzing with Jack Dancer is a brutally honest account by a survivor. It describes how Geoff Goodfellow was misdiagnosed with cancer more than once and misunderstood by health professionals. He can thank his feisty determination for his life. Every aspect of his traumatic experience is covered yet the bleakness of his recollection is interspersed with quips and cracks to make you laugh out loud. Waltzing with Jack Dancer A slow dance with cancer Author: Geoff Goodfellow Publisher: Wakefield Press RRP: $29.95 Poems like Blue Sky Mornings and Maybe reflect on Goodfellow’s past excesses, but also on the mass media which allowed tobacco to be so vigorously promoted to those of his generation. Life in a public ward can be difficult as Goodfellow shows in poems like Hospital Ship and Night Moves but the humour illuminates our understanding of the difficulties. Goodfellow’s teenage daughter’s prose piece The C Word is her story of surviving her dad’s cancer. It is a gut wrenching account by a teenager who lives alone with her father and details the vulnerability of their lives, of his and her fears, and ultimately of how sickness claimed her too. It was short- A moving, tender and compelling story of forbidden love set amid the devastation of war from the award- winning author of Dreamtime Alice. Sydney, 1942. Pearl is 18, beautiful and impetuous. She plays saxophone in an all-girl jazz band at the Trocadero and occasionally sits in on underground gigs with her twin brother Martin, who also plays the sax. Love in the Years of Lunacy A ‘remarkable love story for all desperate times and places’ Author: Mandy Sayer Publisher: Allen and Unwin RRP: $32.99 On one such evening black GI and jazz legend James Washington blows into her life, and nothing is ever the same again, especially not Pearl. A love story begins to unfold against the blacked-out nights and rumour-filled days of a city in the grip of war. But public events are closing in on Pearl’s private world. When James is listed for the 2010 Somerset National Novella Award. The poems are often highlighted by the perceptive eye of Randy Larcombe, an Adelaide photographer who documented Goodfellow’s journey throughout his treatment. Respected for his range of genres and techniques, Larcombe’s work is published in a range of national magazines and commercial and advertising commissions. However being able to tell a story through an image is what he loves best. Geoff Goodfellow is one of Australia’s best-known poets, renowned for taking poetry into difficult territory. Over the years, he has read to thousands of blue collar workers around Australia. Goodfellow has published nine books of poetry, most going into multiple print runs. After his bout with cancer he reintroduced himself to a vast audience with his appearance in an episode of the ABC TV series Bush Slam where he competed against singer/songwriter James Blundell in Tasmania. Goodfellow quips: cancer couldn’t beat me but neither could James Blundell. shipped out to fight in New Guinea, she hatches a breathtaking plan to reunite with him. And then all hell breaks loose. Moving, tender and audaciously original, Love in the Years of Lunacy is a love story with a haunting jazz soundtrack and a war story like no other. Mandy Sayer won the Australian- Vogel Award in 1989 for her novel Mood Indigo. She has written five works of fiction, edited one anthology (with another due for publication later this year), and written two memoirs, Dreamtime Alice, which won the 2000 National Biography Award and Velocity, which won The Age Non- Fiction Prize. She lives in Sydney. THE RETIREE WINTER 169