Comedienne Judith Lucy says her family’s ‘view of normal wasn’t always everyone else’s’ and she’s not kidding! She had her first shower at 15. Until then, her mother had told her the shower was broken. The  maggots her father Tony bred for fishing sat ‘next  to the milk and cans of TAB’ in the fridge and he  drank too much, wore makeup and was not nice to their cat. Her mother ‘based her look on Elizabeth  Taylor and Cleopatra’ and while her parents fought  constantly, she and her brother were close. The  bombshell that she was adopted was dropped when  she was 25. B is for boys, X is for Xmas as Lucy reveals everything including her sexual encounters, a disastrous overseas trip, her struggle with alcohol  and depression, meeting her birth mother, and the death of her adoptive parents. Courageous, brutally  honest, hilarious, sad and moving, this is ultimately a tribute to the parents she loved and still misses. ‘It’s my parents who made me who I am-God help me!’ she says. I’m a long-time Lucy fan so listening to her reading this book is a real treat. A must-listen for fans, but not if swearing offends.

Paula Grunseit is a freelance reviewer and former deputy editor of Good Reading magazine

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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