The Whole Shebang
Clare Boyd-Macrae

The Whole Shebang. Clare Boyd-Macrae.
AUD$28. Post/packaging = AUD$5.

   

'Opening these pages, one is admitted into the world of a deeply intelligent, sensitive and sensual woman who loves her husband, her children and family, her dogs, her friends. Who looks for the meaning in life through bouts of depression, who sends her children off into the world with confidence, and who seeks God in all people and experiences. It is the sharing of her doubts, her dark as well as luminous moments, with simplicity and sincerity, that makes this work such a gift.' -- Olga Lorenzo, from her Introduction

'Melbourne essayist Clare Boyd-Macrae writes in a way that seems deceptively easy. Her topics are often domestic, but underneath the apparent simplicity there are sentences that are smooth, balanced and finely-crafted, and sentiments and reflections that are honest and often funny. In Little Kids she says that, contrary to popular opinion, teenagers are much easier to live with than little children - for a start they sleep at night. Another piece, I love a good funeral, has a similarly frank tone. At a good funeral people will cry for the loss of the departed and sometimes because it takes them back to another death altogether. And at a good funeral some in the family will be religious and others will get drunk and it doesn't matter.

'Boyd-Macrae's articles, many of which have been published in The Age, often reflect her innate religiosity. In praise of great women is a biographical account of her mother, grandmother and herself, who all married men of the cloth. In Elusive God, she suggests that the most valid argument against there being a god, alongside the problem of suffering and evil, is the fact he is hard to find. But she keeps looking for him and is sometimes rewarded. The fact she can share this search with the reader without alienating those who are not at all religious says much about her seductive pen.'

Dianne Dempsey - The Age 21/2/09