Book Review: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins

Terry Pratchett’s life was all about stories.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes

Rob Wilkins (Doubleday, $40)

Reviewer: Louise Ward

Where to start with Sir Terry? Author of more than 50 novels, tinkerer and inventor, with a brain so imaginative he would actively hallucinate stories. That brain would eventually succumb to a rare, early-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease, but he would continue writing to the last minute.

This biography is written by the person who seemed to spend most time with Terry, his personal assistant, Rob Wilkins. Initially hired to deal with fan mail and general admin whilst Terry’s genius got on with hallucinating stories, Rob became a close friend and eventual carer, to the point at which Terry commented they were sharing a brain.

Terry’s life was all about stories. Initially a reluctant reader, and not thought much of by his teachers, he caught the bug at the age of 11 and then read everything he could get his hands on. A published author by the age of 15, he wrote short science fiction stories before eventually settling on comic fantasy, a genre he seems to have invented, nurturing an audience that knew no boundaries of age, race or class.

After a variety of jobs from journalist to public relations, Terry became a fulltime author at the age of 39 and achieved that rare thing with his Discworld novels — phenomenal sales and success. He then became Terry Pratchett, the household name, with conventions and clubs and fan bases dedicated to his work.

This biography is a finely crafted, comprehensive chronicle of Terry’s life and work. Rob is conscious of inserting himself into the story but has to because it is his own anecdotes that form most of it. Terry had begun notes for an autobiography but ran out of time to complete it, and these are widely quoted. Terry’s wife, Lyn, is a rather shadowy figure, and I suspect this is by choice — a quick Google reveals only one photo of her with her husband. The book is all about the man and his work, the final chapters necessarily dealing with the cruel disease that took Terry at the age of 66.

The book reveals Terry as a genius, often terse, with a firm grip on how his work was to be marketed and perceived. He was mostly right, grumpy about being wrong, but grateful for the work of his team.

Post poignantly, Terry’s official website states that, “Some Discworld fans have refrained from reading his final novel in order to keep an unread book from Terry on the shelf”. Read this one, though, for a glimpse at how a beautiful brain sees the world.