The Land Before Avocado, Richard Glover
Rating: ★★★½☆
A handful of copies of this were sitting out on the giveaway table at a client’s head office, so I grabbed one on my way out one day. Quite an enjoyable trip back to the Australia of the 1960s and 1970s, but it did start to get a little slow after coming out of the gates strong. At a minimum, the message to the reader – that the current state of society is far better than it was 50 years ago – is well delivered.
Goodreads: The new book from the bestselling author of Flesh Wounds. A funny and frank look at the way Australia used to be – and just how far we have come. “It was simpler time.” “We had more fun back then.” “Everyone could afford a house.” There’s plenty of nostalgia right now for the Australia of the past, but what was it really like? In The Land Before Avocado, Richard Glover takes a journey to an almost unrecognizable Australia. It’s a vivid portrait of a quite peculiar land: a place that is scary and weird, dangerous and incomprehensible, and, now and then, surprisingly appealing. It’s the Australia of his childhood. The Australia of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Let’s break the news now: they didn’t have avocado. It’s a place of funny clothing and food that was appalling, but amusingly so. It also the land of staggeringly awful attitudes – often enshrined in law – towards anybody who didn’t fit in. The Land Before Avocado will make you laugh and cry, be angry and inspired. And leave you wondering how bizarre things were, not so long ago. Most of all it will make you realize how far we’ve come – and how much further we can go.