This dainty, delicate, savage book is lovely and rare because it is truthful, vicious, brimming with the blue eyes of memory, the red eyes of defeat, the open mouth and congo drum of childhood. When Barry Oakley writes of his childhood, it is you booting him the footy of laughter.

He writes, wonderfully, sweetly, dreamily of taking his sore-footed mum and soft-drink-eyed son for the satiric day to Taronga Zoo. Among the gorillas and orchids, you watch him scribble in the light. A journalist cobber to fellow mysteries, his friends.

He describes Patrick White as a retired Dairy Farmer; quite whitely so. I have only seen Monsieur White once. I was sipping drunken tea inside George’s Cafe in Oxford Street, and he gloomed by. I wanted to call out something, but couldn’t imagine him sharing lettuce á la defeat.