Recommend: No
Michelle Brasier is One of the Boys.
Michelle Brasier is the ‘female one’ of the Aunty Donna crew. Michelle Brasier is from Wagga Wagga. Michelle Brasier loves acting and singing and being schwilly. Michelle Brasier has not always had a schwilly life because her dad and her brother and her dog have all died from cancer and she herself is at great risk of also developing cancer.
Michelle Brasier is not, however, an author. Not even for a chapter, of which there are countless many in this memoir.
Brasier is a public-ish persona and she’s definitely been through a lot. I think she can be very funny and charismatic in the Aunty Donna sketches. She just cannot write. No problems, you can’t be good at everything. But who gave her a book deal? Can I have one? I could do an exposé of life on the trading floor, written in the format of 10,000 end of day comments.
So yes, first things first, the writing is very basic. There are no nice turns of phrase, no nuanced characters and absolutely no tension.
Secondly, the structure is abysmal. Chapters make chaotic jumps between different time periods in Brasier’s life like a coked up Chihuahua flinging itself from person to person at Christmas lunch. Brasier seems to be embarrassed about this complete lack of structure because she gives a sorry-not-sorry in the “Note to the Reader” (note: notes are not a valid way to start a book).
It will swing between earnest reflective bits and silliness.
That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.
Thirdly, somehow the content of this book is boring. There are no insights into show business aside from she once filmed something in Queensland and had no cell reception and met a spider. There’s also zilch about the creative process, and how that evolves in a group dynamic that has become so successful it must surely now resemble a workplace to some degree. Given Brasier works in a very famous sketch group, it’s incredible the book doesn’t once mention of how she fits into Aunty Donna, her history with the group, her contributions to it, or her frustrations with it.
Fourthly, and to me this is the most unforgivable, there is an incredible amount of repetition in the book. The same event in her life can be covered in four different chapters, and not in different lights. In the same light, more stark and unforgiving each time it shines. I can only imagine she was forced to write 300 pages (303 to be precise) before receiving her paycheck. In the battle to have more chapters than any other memoir (more chapters = more blank space on the page = more pages = closing in on that 300 page requirement), Brasier probably just forgot she had already mentioned an event multiple times already and so goes on to describe it, again. I feel like Brasier typed this whole book on a laptop in not too dissimilar a context to myself – on the couch with a cup of tea, in between going for a walk to get groceries and shaving my legs, too lazy to reread and edit the sections for coherence. She gave it the focus she would give to patting her dog or scrolling short videos.
In publishing this boring, repetitive, remarkably unfunny memoir, Michelle, you’ve revealed that you are in fact not one of the boys. A man wouldn’t have published such drivel.
You should have tried harder.
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