Now Listen Mate!

Now Listen, Mate! is a book of essays on various topics, by Australian author, John O’Grady. It starts off well with a hilarious chapter on chooks that describes some of O’Grady’s youth on a farm and includes snake traps, catching chooks and games with mercury. His chapter on language gives a potted history of the English language in its journey to Australia. From there, it all starts to go downhill: he doesn’t take his own advice in the chapter on Writers, failing to stick to what he knows (humour) and opining on God (exists), Women, Censorship (should be banned), Weddings (should be banned), Art (modern Art isn’t), Politicians (too many of them), Sex and Funerals. Very little of the opinion is at all politically correct, but then O’Grady never was. We are informed that monks wrote most of Shakespeare’s works. Some of the illustrations by Benier are quite funny. Much of the text is not. Mediocre.