Exclusive extract from The Australian Women’s Weekly Book of the Month for May.
Chapter 1, Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings (Picador $28):
How would you have me write it? Bloody awful, all of it.
I will tell my story as straight as I can, as straight as anyone’s crooked recollections allow. I will tell it in my own voice, although treating myself as another, observed, appeals. If I can, no jokes or jibes, no persiflage-my preferred defenses. I’d rather eat garden worms than be earnest or serious. Or sentimental.
I recount the events of those years with great reluctance. Not because you might think less of me- there is always that. No, the reason is a rule I try to follow, summed up by Ellen Burstyn in the movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: “Don’t look back. You’ll turn into a pillar of shit.”
See? I can’t help it. Wisecracking-a reflex. I’ve lived in New York for several decades, but I was born in Australia, where the fine art of undercutting ourselves- and others- is learned along with our ABCs. Australians- clowns, debunkers.
I have to start somewhere so it might as well be with Mike.
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