KEY POINTS:
A heart-warming, spirit-lifting, tear-bringing memoir of growing up poor and finding life's riches. How depressing. And how unfair, because Simon Doonan's recollections of Paradise Camped are a good deal more than that. This reprint of his 2005 story introduces a guy with serious style. After all, in the acknowledgements he thanks his nanny, his therapist, and his lawyer.
Doonan grew up in Reading, in a typical household where Mum wore white stilettos, Dad was obsessed by dead languages and sewing, Grandma had to be continually dragged out of the gas oven, Uncle Ken was bonkers, and the lodgers' mouths kept hanging open.
Oh, and Simon and his sister Shelagh were both gay. It wasn't a big deal: "There was not a lot of point in trying to make sense of the mystical, magical world of sexual identity." Fair enough.
Simon covets his sister's rejected dolls and pours Harpic on his genitals (don't ask). He and his David Bowie- lookalike mate Biddie move to Swinging London, where mushrooms grow through their kitchen floor and they get work in soft furnishings.
All the while, Simon yearns to be one of the Beautiful People from his magazines. Where do they buy their kaftans and unguents? How often do they holiday in St Tropez? Much camp mischief and hilarity follow, as he struggles to break free of the non-twinkly, ordinary people.
His Dad has a disaster with blackcurrant wine in the attic. His Mum hits up the pub-owner for Grandad's funeral expenses, since that is where all Grandad's money went. Uncle Ken gets married and every expense is spared. Simon himself yearns for a red glass decanter as a 12th birthday present.
He moves to Hollywood, near the Max Factor Museum, works as a window dresser and then as a set designer. You may say "of course". Then it's New York and a PhD in Hedonism.
His most rewarding scenes are the grittier ones - surviving as an effeminate boy at school; yearning for an identity; watching a friend die from Aids.
He will make you shake your head, drop your jaw, lift your eyebrows and grin a lot. Most authors would be pretty happy with that.
Beautiful People
By Simon Doonan (HarperCollins $29.99)
* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.
