The Lucy Family Alphabet (Judith Lucy, Viking, $29.95 pb, ISBN 9780670071326, May) ****

A great deal of Judith Lucy’s successful stand-up shtick has centred around her crazy family and in particular her parents. Therefore when someone made a passing comment that implied she must despised them Lucy was shocked and decided to set the record straight. This A to Z (A is for arguments, B is for bathing…) of the Lucy family is both funny and honest but mostly it is a tragically poignant portrayal of life growing up in a dysfunctional family in the Perth of the 1960s and 1970s. While Lucy continues to mine the material for a joke anywhere she can find one, there are plenty of incidents where perhaps the only way to cope was to find the laugh. The Lucy Family Alphabet gives us insight into one of Australia’s funniest comedians and provides the context for many of her long-running gags. Avoiding any of the usual relinquished-child  narrative sentimentality, it is respectful of her parents’ lopsided way of demonstrating their love while allowing Lucy’s irreverent voice to remain distinctively clear. I am a sucker for any book as nakedly honest as this one but if you (or the intended recipient) are easily offended then perhaps this is not for you.

Rachel Wilson is an academic and occasionally works at the Sun Bookshop Yarraville

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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