It’s a Shame About Ray

My dad, Ray, jabbed steroids into Beyonce’s butt when she lost her voice the day of her stadium show. My dad jumped into Sydney Harbour to save my brand-new red Power Ranger toy. My dad made his own jam, muesli and sourdough bread. My dad protected me from cockroaches, but he never, ever killed them. My dad once covered for so many of my demerit points that he lost his own licence and had to ride a bicycle to work for a year. My dad tended a worm farm in the compost bins in our back garden.

Blackly funny and frequently devastating, this memoir traverses family, death, hope, love, survival, compassion and the deep relationship we can develop with music throughout our lives when nothing else is enough. It’s a Shame About Ray asks how we shape new identities from old tragedies - and whether the answers might be hiding in the bestselling record of 2001.

Several lifetimes in the making, Jonathan Seidler has created a lyrical and original interrogation of men and memories, a tracklist of songs of innocence and experience that beautifully unpick a life lived to the full - and sometimes spilling over the lip.

My dad ate the whole apple: core, pips and all.