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From prim little ballerina to surfer girl to unruly rocker in a school tunic. Chrissy Amphlett’s path to stardom mightn’t have been smooth, but her ambition was unwavering. Her onstage persona as frontwoman for The Divinyls, her unique voice and raw lyrics marked her as one of a kind in the Australian music scene of the 1980s and 90s. Living with MS later in life, Amphlett was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. Before it felled her, she made I Touch Myself an “anthem for breast health worldwide” says her husband Charley Drayton in a postscript to this updated version of her autobiography. Amphlett doesn’t spare herself as she tells of the manic creative energy that propelled her and the wild and thoughtless behaviour it sometimes engendered. The memories of bandmates, ex-manager, friends and family inserted into the text fill out the picture of Amphlett as gutsy, incandescent, uncompromising and sometimes downright scary, especially if you were an audience member foolish enough to heckle her. Poems & PrayersMatthew McConaugheyHeadline, $36.99 Actor Matthew McConaughey began writing poems in a bathtub on the central coast of NSW as an unhappy 18-year-old exchange student. It was his way of making sense of what was going on his life, and he’s been doing it ever since. The poems and prayers in this collection still exude a quality of teenage angst as they grope for meaning and purpose in self-described ditties that rhyme. Although McConaughey was also reading Byron in that bathtub, he is not one for literary language, preferring down home, straight-talking with irregular rhythms that suggests song lyrics rather than formal poetry. As such, this is not a book for literature students. But for those for whom sentiment and candour are more important than style. And there are even moments of humour: ‘God,/ forgive me, I’m trying./ And God replied,/ “Thank you, I would rather you arrive/ late to my house sweating, in a pair/ of runners and a hoodie, than arrive/ early elsewhere in a tuxedo” ’ Just SayingHugh MackayAllen & Unwin, $24.99 Meaningful sayings can be like guiding stars. They don’t contain the whole cosmos, but they do help illuminate it. The 25 adages that Hugh Mackay ponders in this collection are necessarily idiosyncratic, a reflection of his taste and values. Some he has chosen to take issue with, such as Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living” because it harshly judges those who can’t afford the luxury of navel-gazing. Others, he fleshes out to reveal as more complex than they appear. Karl Marx said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world ... It is the opium of the people.” As Mackay notes, the full quote is much more nuanced than the dismissive-sounding, truncated version we’re all familiar with. Perhaps the most satisfying meditation is on the quote attributed to the Buddha, “Change is never painful; only the resistance to change is painful.” This paradox contains the tension that governs our lives and Mackay does it justice.
