LAUGHING AT THE DARK, by Barbara Else (Penguin, $37) The famous expat Hungarian intellectual and writer Arthur Koestler opined that people wrote memoirs and autobiographies “for two main reasons: the chronicler urge, or the ecce homo [behold the man] motive”.
The first focuses on external events; the second – behold the (wo)man! to be an chronicle, stepping agilely and often between the “Great World” and the personal, truly great world. Among other things, it’s a nuanced exploration of gender roles, social expectations, the juggling to be good, whole and honest. Else encounters such issues early, with her mother’s “quietly refusing to do what you’re told”; her own wagging from Sunday School, “fed up with being good”; her primary school realisation of the compromises and complexities of conventional virtue.
