Product Description
anything can happen is a memoir from a prize-winning Australian author. Funny, heartbreaking, it has exactly the arc of a good story. Among a slice of social history of Sydney’s inner west, there’s a farm in Victoria, a rural lesbian subculture, Mardi Gras, the pleasures of teaching writing, and flashbacks to the working-class fishing culture of Stockton (Newcastle) in the 1960s and 70s.
Juxtaposition is her gift, as is the very natural speaking voice. With the eye of a poet, and someone who has experienced it all, straight and married, gay and married, mother, friend, lover, writer, this is a raw and truthful account of a life lived fully.
It’s the sort of writing Hampton excels at. There’s no-one else I know who can hit that dry, droll, edgy note and conjure place and time and character and the random nature of memory and story-telling.
—Kim Mahood
Perfectly pitched, alive on every page … The Tommy thread is achingly knowable to all lovers I think, straight or gay. My emotions were fully engaged.
—Gail Bell
I read this memoir for its sly mix of beat sensibility, high culture, and suburban realism … that wry, warm Hampton voice I remember from Surly Girls, briefly sounding profound chords as it weaves laconic observations into an artfully told narrative.
—Paul Gillen
It made me think a lot about patience, acceptance, understanding, revolution, art, poverty, meaning, self-discovery, and the energy that’s created between people as they each take their own journey through life, and maybe how we’re all shaped by that energy.
—Conrad Buffier
