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Tag: memoir

Book review – Last Rites, by Ozzy Osbourne

January 9, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Title: Last Rites: Never-before-told stories of a legendary life from the rock ‘n’ roll hellraiser

Author: Ozzy Osbourne

Publisher: Sphere/Hachette, 2025; RRP: $34.99

Review: Frank Thompson, December 2025; Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

“Husband, Father, Grandfather, Icon.  1948–2025.” This quote appearing on the back cover says it all, from Ozzy’s perspective. For the rest of the world the focus is on the word “Icon”. Ozzy Osbourne, frontman for Black Sabbath, the band often credited with establishing heavy metal as a music genre.

When I was young, a mate of mine lived in half an old house that backed onto a large church which rang bells on Sunday mornings, loudly, as if to re-sanctify the air after a Saturday night of very loud music from my mate’s custom-built sound system — Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and War Pigs and other tracks high on a play list saturated with heavy undertones of darkness. Were we protesting the established righteousness? I think not.

Last Rites is not Ozzy’s first memoir, but as he says, it would probably be his last, and so it turned out to be, the rocker bowing out at age 76 on 22 July 2025. The book covers his last years, from around 2018, and includes details of his last concert. The writing style is casual and friendly with Ozzy talking directly to the reader, relating the sequence of events mostly to do with his failing health, but there are lots of little side tracks into earlier events, reminisces, and anecdotes. These may have the odd spec of gold for the trivia buffs.

Ozzy is honest and candid in his recollections, though like anybody’s story I would assume there is omitted detail. This is a man who knows in his heart the end is getting closer and it is time to reconcile and be thankful. About halfway into the book Ozzy provides some advice on how to survive the music industry: “The way I look at it, if you’re in the music game for long enough, the best way to survive is, one, keep your sense of humour, and two, never, ever fall into the trap of believing your own bullshit. Because that’s fatal, every time.” Personally, I’d suggest this is good advice whatever game you are in.

Ozzy’s last gig, 5 July 2025

@ YOUTUBE

An attracter and creator of chaos, Ozzy developed a habit of hamming it up to gain acceptance early on in his life. The hamming escalated over the years; unfortunately, wild behaviour can have bad outcomes. However, I do not recall Ozzy bemoaning the bad things, accepting these as being the result of his own actions, and thankful things did not turn out worse.

While there is a lot of detail about the causes of his failing health and the various treatments, it is done in a light-hearted style. The portrayal of the American health system or lack thereof is interesting. It appeared to me that money does not guarantee the quality of the treatment.

One could be cynical and suggest this memoir is all part of the business of monetising Ozzy Osborne, but surely this is what being an icon is about. Ozzy is more than just a singer in front of a band. And there is a two-way contract between an icon and its fan base. The TV shows, the albums, and the memoirs: these contain the stuff that maintains the momentum of the fan base, giving them something larger than life to adore, talk about, and follow, distracting them from their own lives.

I read this book as a piece of light entertainment, a curiosity, but after reading it I got the impression there is a lot more to Ozzy than local boy makes the big time while partying wildly. When you strip away the bling and the outrageous bits, you are left with a normal well-meaning guy who doesn’t question his luck, tries his best and is happy to ride the wave. Now I understand the relevance of the opening quote.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Book review – One Day I’ll Remember This, by Helen Garner

June 28, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Title: One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries Volume II 1987-1995

Author: Helen Garner

Publisher: Text Publishing; 2022  

Review: Frank Thompson, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

The name Garner came up recently in relation to a celloist at this year’s CresFest.  A friend suggested the celloist was probably Helen Garner’s daughter. And then went on to reminisce about life in inner Melbourne suburbs in the late sixties and early seventies, suggesting she knew people like the characters in Helen’s debut novel, Monkey Grip.

I vaguely remembered the name and must confess I have not read any of her actual works. With my curiosity piqued, I couldn’t resist the Helen Garner diary I spotted in a favourite bookshop. This review is mostly about that diary, which as it turns out is the middle volume of a three-volume set covering Helen’s life from 1978 to 1998*.

The three diaries are similar in layout, arranged chronologically, though the individual entries are not dated.  Various characters are represented by a single capital letter. A couple of notable people, such as fellow writer Elizabeth Jolley, are mentioned by name – is this name dropping? And some people, such as members of Helen’s family, are referenced by their relationship, e.g., ‘My Sister’ (which is confusing because I believe she has four sisters).  

The diaries are written as a series of slivers of Helen’s life, each presented separately. Not simple jottings or notes but vignettes – dreams observations, anecdotes, meetings and assignations, conversations had and overheard (two young lads talking on a tram) – all very personal and revealing.

At first the entries seem a random selection, with no context. The absence of a timeline accentuates this impression. Some entries are linked, dealing with the same topic and run through the three books – Helen’s relationship with V, for example. This thread goes from early meetings, to growing involvement, to marriage and finally to separation.  It gives the books a story with momentum.

Discussing Monkey Grip

@ The Wheeler Centre

While these diaries are revealing, I would not call them a warts-and-all disclosure, certainly not grubby, no bleeding hearts or character assassinations. One cannot help wondering if much editing and filleting was done to the original handwritten entries.  

I found the writing to be deceptively simple, everyday words exquisitely arranged, affording intimacy and familiarity. Perhaps why I’m using Helen and not Garner.

Diaries contain one’s innermost thoughts and observations, windows to the inner workings of one’s life. Perhaps, reading other people’s stirs the hidden voyeur in us. The opportunity to see what really goes on behind a public image. And these diaries are about Helen’s life, there is not a lot of talk about her writing: a few entries and snippets here and there. I guess writing for a writer is work, not life.

I enjoyed reading these diaries especially the middle one. Not just for what I learned about Helen but for what I learned about myself. And those lessons … well, you will have to wait and see if I publish my diaries.

* The others being Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I 1978-1987 and How to End a Story: Diaries Volume III 1995-1998

Book review: Feijoa, by Kate Evans

June 14, 2024 / / 3 Comments

Title: Feijoa — A Story of Obsession & Belonging

Author: Kate Evans

Publisher: Hachette/Moa Press, 2024; RRP $34.99

I picked this work to read and review primarily because I have two feijoas in my garden and I don’t know enough about them save my neighbour has one and I thought why not. It has been a puzzling journey. One is currently covered in fruit after five to six years of providing me with lovely exotic-looking flowers blossoming out from promising little green nubs that would then drop off the branch without going any further. The second was slashed back to its base by an overly enthusiastic gardening helper and ever since has done nothing more than slowly claw its way back from what seemed certain annihilation. Though tropical by nature, and despite my very unhealthy soil, they are doing better than I thought so I already knew it was not an ordinary tree, and this book was a chance to learn more. 

Feijoa: A Story of Obsession & Belonging is written, predictably, by a feijoa addict, one who says  in the opening lines that this fruit ‘feels like home to me’. This I get. Apricots are home to me, so this approach sounded very promising.

Though centred on the feijoa, this work is also part memoir and part travel, interweaving geography, history and cultural explorations with detailed descriptions of feijoa-based meals shared with others, a sprinkling of recipes in which feijoa is the main act, and a search for a garden lost to time.

The historical and cultural influence includes socio-economic and political history of countries and peoples where the feijoa played an important role in everyday life, and also in the wider political and economic spheres.

It also contains information about the medicinal and health use of feijoa from the indigenous peoples of different countries thousands of years old, to recent discoveries in scientific laboratories. There is also reference to the lack of acknowledgement of either this older knowledge or the peoples who shared it with others who came later. In her dedication the author writes, 

For the feijoa-lovers, from 4000 years ago to today.

Warning us that Feijoa extends far beyond the walls of scientific laboratories and our backyards, and into the lives of all the different cultures and lands on which feijoa grows and has been loved for thousands of years.

The author travelled widely in her investigations. The chapters are headed conveniently for each country she visited. This is not only a tidy way of ordering the social  and cultural contexts of the role feijoa played in each location but also allowed me as a gardener to compare what was described there with the environment mine are growing in. There I  discovered its amazing resilience and capacity to survive – which explained the miraculous survival of a near death experience of one of mine.

Kate Evans talks about her love of the feijoa

@ abc nightlife

Both memoir and non memoir components of Feijoa are supported by a substantial set of End Notes pp 287-307 containing a mix of citations and footnotes rather than being a traditional bibliography. Citations of published works are mixed with recollections or the addition of extra information supporting what is contained in the body of the work. Where political, historical, medical, cultural, social, economic, agricultural or any other non-memoir statements are made, what is said refers back to a searchable source.

Who would enjoy this work?

This work is definitely niche, even for gardeners, however it satisfies more than one niche, which means potential to please more than one reading interest.

Even if you don’t particularly like feijoa the book is interesting for its approach of exploring the world through an unashamedly besotted focus on one plant, going deeper than simply how to grow and cook it – though foodies would be interested in that too. There is useful information for gardeners thinking of getting or already having a feijoa in their garden. The travel and memoir sides are entertaining in their own right and the extended look into the wider contexts in which one piece of fruit sits was also interesting. It is also particularly pleasing for anyone who fits more than one – personally I found the combination of travel, memoir, cooking and gardening both useful and enjoyable.

The author, New Zealand’s Kate Evans, is an award-winning journalist and nature writer who has written for, among others, The Guardian, The Observer, National Geographic and Scientific American. She has also won national media awards for scientific and environmental journalism and feature writing. She has also worked as a TV producer, and a video journalist including at the ABC and the BBC and reporting from multiple locations internationally.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell, June 2024

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review — The Girl in the Green Dress, by Jeni Haynes and Dr George Blair-West

July 21, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Title: The Girl in the Green Dress

Authors: Jeni Haynes and Dr George Blair-West, with Alley Pascoe

Publisher: Hachette Australia, 2022; RRP: $32.99

The Girl in the Green Dress is the story of Dr Jennifer ‘Jeni’ Haynes, who lives with multiple personality disorder (MPD), a subgroup of dissociative identity disorder (DID) — a psychological state where the mind separates into multiple selves.

Developing MPD was how she protected herself from a horrifying childhood of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her father.  At six months of age, her sense of self divided and she became Symphony, the girl in the green dress, her new core personality creating multiple other personalities through the years that followed, each giving specific strengths to Jeni to prevent her from being destroyed by her father’s abuse.

Dr George Blair-West is a psychiatrist specialising in relationship therapy and dissociative trauma work, who worked with Dr Haynes for over twenty years from 1998.

Dr Haynes’ father, Richard Haynes, had what she termed ‘built-in respectability’, protected by his good reputation established by being descended from a noted English family and an expert in the field of electronic engineering.

Failing to get help from the medical profession and determined to find justice for herself, Jeni Haynes spent eighteen years at university, struggling and ultimately succeeding in graduating with a degree in psychology and a Masters in legal studies and criminal justice.

The book begins where she ends her educational journey and enters the courtroom where the truth of what happened to her at the hands of her father would finally be tested in the legal system — not by the health system, blind to what was happening to her and consistently failing to address her condition or her social and home environment.

The narrative structure is an interesting mix of biography and autobiography, with the main character and her psychiatrist writing not only their separate roles of patient and psychiatrist but also of the shifting relationship between them over the years they worked together.

According to what is being relayed, chapters (and sections within chapters) alternate between Dr Blair-West providing information about his meetings with Jeni Haynes and expository material defining psychiatric terms and treatments, and Dr Haynes speaking about her MPD and Dr Haynes as Jeni Haynes recreating her experiences in the voice of one of the multiple personalities she created.

Jeni Haynes in conversation with Ginger Gorman

@ the national library of Australia

The Girl in the Green Dress is a harrowing work and there are warnings to this effect both at the beginning and dotted throughout. Initially I found this intrusive, but as the sheer volume and extent of the abuse was disclosed, I found the warnings helped, certainly preparing me as reader for increasingly distressing information.

When it is Jeni telling her story, and not Dr Jennifer Haynes, her words come from one of many, many different identities, each performing different roles protecting her. A major strength is how the material is presented such that the reader does not get completely lost. Each voice emerges as clearly different in tone and personality. A useful list of them all by name, their place in the hierarchy of protective layers, and the particular function each performs is given at the beginning, providing a useful character-based map to her inner life.

Control of the impact of the material is also held tightly within a framework of chapters and sections where her psychiatrist links what Jeni says to the physical development of the brain from very young and onwards, and to the medical and social environment in which Jeni battles to survive.

Read an excerpt of The Girl in the Green Dress

@ the sMH

Some of the most disturbing material relates to the responses of psychiatrists and psychologists from whom Jeni, now a deeply damaged adult, seeks help. Failing repeatedly to find that help, she decides she must find her own answers, realising her father’s reputation was always going to be a barrier to being believed.

Dr Blair-West also points out that it took a long time before DID was recognised, let alone MPD, which meant few were qualified or accessible to recognise and treat it.

The language of both Dr Haynes and Dr Blair-Smith is aimed at professionals in the world of psychiatry and mental illness, and laymen, moving smoothly between complex concepts explained by Jeni’s doctor and Dr Haynes articulating her experiences through the multiple voices via which we see into Jeni Haynes’ life.

My only concern is that, given the extent of her husband’s extremely violent and manipulative activities throughout, there is scanty information about the inexplicable failure of Jeni’s mother to know what was happening in her own home over all those years. Undiagnosed autism is offered briefly at the start and in a little more detail at the end, but there is little more than that. Though the abuse ceased when Jeni turned eleven, this response extended to decisions she made after Richard Haynes had left the family home, taking his other daughter with him and abusing her also, and encouraging Jeni to maintain contact with him, so keeping her within his psychological reach.

By not addressing this, the image of her mother lacks the depth her position in the family requires.It would have been a significantly stronger work, and kinder to her mother, if how the undiagnosed autism related to her behaviour had been addressed, both specifically in her case and generally how autism could lead to it. Also of use would be when and how it eventually came to be diagnosed, including what prompted that step, using the same openness and insight as shown in describing her daughter’s experience and her father’s behaviour.

In conclusion, however, I was left more with an overall sense that The Girl in the Green Dress is not only a courageous story about how the brain of one vulnerable baby girl changed to protect her from unspeakable abuse and helped her emerge victorious, but also a story that raises awareness of the role our own brains play in protecting us and how they are doing that right now, more than we might ever know. 

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review – 28, by Brandon Jack

March 20, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Title: 28

Author: Brandon Jack

Publisher: Allen & Unwin,  2021; RRP: $29.99

Brandon Jack, known as BJ, is the youngest son of a sports-mad family. His father is an ex-professional rugby player, and his two brothers also played at a high level. His mother, he admits regretfully, was someone he did not know outside her role supporting her sons’ football-filled childhoods. Family life circled around sport: attending training, playing games, talking about and watching games with all family members fully involved.

When BJ reached 18 he was drafted to the Sydney Swans AFL side where his brother Kieren also played, joining an intake of 44 new players that would fill only 22 available spaces in the senior games. His journey is told chronologically, from childhood to his final decision to leave professional football.

BJ stayed with the Swans from 2014 until 2018. The first two years he went all out, doing all that was asked of him and more, undertaking gruelling training sessions and extensive post-game sessions watching replays of the game and micro analysing personal and team performance. Despite all his efforts he was frustrated by how he failed to be chosen for senior games, instead relegated to reserve. At the same time he continued his love of heavy metal music, learning guitar and enjoying writing, including songs.

Around 2016, as disillusionment set in at his repeated failure to fulfil his football dreams, he began to question his life choices. In the process he discovered a stronger than expected identification with the music and writing side of himself. His changing feelings included re-evaluating the almost hothouse environment in which he spent his childhood with his sports-obsessed family, discovering in the process that underlying his dream to pursue high-level football was mainly a desire to play with Kieren.

At this point, still floundering and unable to make a final break but already committed to a second two years, he decided to complete the two years simply to honour his contractual obligations. This he did, playing as required and fulfilling only basic training requirements. To fill the emptiness he felt inside he indulged heavily in drugs, alcohol and expensive and stupid pranks, which meant when he finally finished he discovered he had only $30,000 in savings to show for five years’ work.

Brandon Jack talks about life after footy

at ABC news breakfast

I found this autobiography totally engrossing despite the fact that my interest in sport is casual at the best. Its raw and unfiltered honesty leaps off the pages. His analysis of those in his life is rigorous, whether he is looking at himself, his family, or the sporting personnel central to how the Australian football world operates.

He comes across as focussed and fair, and worth reading about, an athlete and a writer who can speak with careful insight into his upbringing and his disillusionment with the way high-level football works and also share stories of his football mates, some of whom he maintains connection with, such as regularly meeting with a favourite coach to kick a ball back and forth in a local park after he left the Swans.

His relationship with his family is complex and written through the eyes of a still-angry son and brother but he writes with care as well as passion. Family and football come across as intertwined, his dedication to the game born of family ties as exclusive and blinkered as that of a high-level football team. 

The language of 28 was particularly effective in drawing me in. He uses the short, terse and urgent notes in his training manuals to describe his first year, which captures perfectly his almost manic commitment to training and self analysis. He uses football language, blithely assuming we will all know what he is referring to, as do all those deeply enmeshed in their chosen worlds. While the words and phrases were warm and familiar, as I have heard them in the background on radio and TV all my life – sometimes to hear how Geelong was doing – some did require googling to understand what he was referring to. 

Once past the first year, football language doesn’t dominate as much as he moves into areas such as a thoughtful section analysing the difference between sport and creativity, and artist and athlete. This shift adds to the raw feeling of the book, strengthening the sense of who Brandon Jack is and showing the artist and musician within and emphasising the struggle it was to extricate himself from who he thought he was to being who he actually was.

 It’s also an excellent opportunity to be a fly on the wall in the training room of an Australian Football League team!

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell, February 2022

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Memoir workshop with Jenny Valentish

February 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Memoir writing – be it book, blog, essay, or legacy for the family – can be daunting. That might be because you’re stumped as to how to start (your life has been EPIC … and spans ‘several’ decades). Or perhaps you don’t know where would be a fitting point to end. Maybe the thing that’s always stopped you from writing your story, or a part of it, is you’re afraid of exposing yourself – or of upsetting other people. That can be paralysing, but there are ways around all of this.

In this workshop, journalist Jenny Valentish, journalist and author of Woman of Substances: A Journey into Addiction and Treatment, trouble-shoots the concerns you may have. We’ll go deep into structure – prologues, ways of ordering things, themes as motifs, and weaving in research (if that’s your thing). There are methods of jogging your memory and reinhabiting your younger self. We’ll find ways to describe different people without you getting cast out of your family, and look at some of the disclaimers that famous memoirists have put on their work. There’s a section on nailing tone, humour and finding your voice, and we’ll look at how to avoid sounding self-conscious.

Workshop details

When: Saturday 20 March 2021, noon-3pm

Where: Training Room 1, Eastwood Leisure Centre, 20 Eastwood St, Ballarat Central, VIC 3350

Cost: Ballarat Writers Members $80, non-members $90. Please note: the workshop is limited to 12 participants.

Bookings: At Trybooking

Other details: Due to the venue’s COVIDSafe procedures, we are unable to serve drinks or share food at this event. Please BYO water bottle and snacks. The centre is directly across the road from Ballarat Central’s Ferguson’s and Baker’s Delight bakeries. Hand sanitising will be available. Social distancing will be in place and participants will not be required to wear masks under current protocols.

Sign up to become a Ballarat Writers member. 

writer Jenny Valentish

About Jenny Valentish

Journalist Jenny Valentish’s third book is Woman of Substances: A Journey into Addiction and Treatment, which blends research and memoir. It was long-listed for a Walkley Book Award and is now on the recommended reading list for several university courses. Jenny is the former editor of Triple J’s Jmag and Time Out (Melbourne edition) and regularly contributes to The Guardian, ABC, The Age and more. She is working on her fourth book, to be published by Black Inc in 2021. She has held a memoir writing workshop for The Monthly, delivered a course to Writers Victoria members three times and has taught first-person writing at Monash, Collarts, and to Catherine Deveny’s Gunnas. A version of the workshop has also been developed for drug and alcohol professionals and their clients. Find out more at Jenny’s website

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