AustLit

'An uplifting, heartfelt memoir about surviving life’s upheavals – and how to live authentically

'Breaking up isn’t a conscious decision, it’s more of a revelation … In the first few moments after waking each day I needed to remind myself who I was and what had happened. It was like pulling a compass out of a drawer and watching it adjust, the needle swinging around to find true north and quivering before staying there.

'When writer Catherine Deveny faced the end of a seventeen-year relationship with the father of her children, she had no idea what lay on the other side of the months of tumult: she just knew she had to create space for a new life.

'But this wasn’t the first time she’d taken a plunge into the unknown or let go of conventional assumptions. In this heartfelt and moving memoir, Deveny shares how she learnt to live life on her own terms. From her oppressive Catholic upbringing in Melbourne’s working-class inner-north, through growing independence in her teenage years and university sharehouses to life in Melbourne’s thriving cultural scene, Deveny’s life is at once highly relatable and utterly unique.

'True North is a cathartic and uplifting read that will resonate with anyone who has gone through – or is currently living through – a major life change.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'My first question to him at six-thirty this morning was, ‘Have you taken your antibiotics?’

'His first question to me was, ‘When I take money out of the ATM in Japan do I choose yen or Australian dollars?’

'Today my firstborn, Dom, and I ran through another of the many crepe paper banners, of parenting for me, and being an adult for him.' (Introduction)

'Take two reality pills and call me in the morning.

'Swine Flu. Financial meltdown. It’s been a bad year for pigs and pigs in suits. The only thing for it is a good dose of Catherine Deveny, who each week in The Age puts everything into perspective with her trademark iconoclastic wit.

'Free to a Good Home includes her thoughts on gifted children and breakfast television, sexy billboards and the bill of rights. She reflects on her youngest child’s first day at school, and on how to be happy in hard times.

'Fearlessly funny and always provocative, Deveny is the perfect antidote to the modern world’s ills.

'Can anyone explain why I did this? I went to the chemist and bought this crap I put on my face to make me look younger. I put the jar on the counter. The chemist girl said, ‘Is this stuff any good?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘I’m sixty.’ Eyes like saucers, mouth agape, she gasped, ‘OH MY GOD! Sixty! Toula! Fatima! Kelly! Come and check out this old lady. She’s sixty!’ So the other chemist girls scurried over and after a bit of oohing and aahing one said, ‘Oh my God! Sixty? You look like you’re forty-five!’

'I’m forty. Chemist girls, one. Smart-arse, zero.' (Publication summary)