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Gerald and Lucille are two unemployed city-dwellers on a hiding-to-nothing, recovering from the Covid lockdown when the unimaginable happens: they are offered the opportunity to manage a lifestyle block in the country.
Right from the outset, the reader knows these two loveable but challenged characters are going to entertain with their uncanny knack for creating trouble for themselves. Giving chase to an intruder on a steep-pitched roof in the dark with a loaded double-barreled shotgun is just the introduction to Gerald’s list of disasters. If the sympathetic reader is expecting common sense and good counsel from his wife, he won’t find it.
Lucille, in a misguided act of patriotism, decides to gather intelligence on a P manufacturing Australian gang down at the end of the road who know only too well how to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war. Surviving that disaster means nothing to these two, and they agree to travel to Australia and bring back a thoroughbred horse for Lucille’s father. There, in an ironic twist of Fate, their poor judgement actually saves them from the dire consequences of defying the Australian mafia.
The author has brought to life the eccentrics of the New Zealand country life in a way that is reminiscent of Barry Crump.
Lucille, in a misguided act of patriotism, decides to gather intelligence on a P manufacturing Australian gang down at the end of the road who know only too well how to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war. Surviving that disaster means nothing to these two, and they agree to travel to Australia and bring back a thoroughbred horse for Lucille’s father. There, in an ironic twist of Fate, their poor judgement actually saves them from the dire consequences of defying the Australian mafia.
The author has brought to life the eccentrics of the New Zealand country life in a way that is reminiscent of Barry Crump.
Reviews
This book is a rollicking ride through the absurd yet identifiable adventures of two city slickers naively embracing the supposed simplicity of the country life.
— Gerald and Lucille are both losers in their own ways, but together they rampage through their lives like bulls in a China shop, leaving shattered bits of crockery behind them wherever they go. The only thing to do as observers of their catastrophic lives is to laugh.
— There is something of all of us in the well-meaning but hopelessly bumbling Gerald and Lucille. While the predicaments they get themselves into make us sigh with exasperation or shake our heads with amusement, their casual incompetence at life makes us laugh a little uneasily as we see something of ourselves in that incompetence.
— The uniqueness of Mark Chamberlain’s witty depiction of two city innocents moving to the countryside to take up farming is that, rather than concentrating on the usual hilarious mistakes made by newcomers to country life with animal husbandry or horticulture, he concentrates on their sometimes side-splitting adventures with their not-quite-typical rural community of misfits.
Dr Lyn Wytenbroeck, Retired Professor of Literature.
Hilarious and unique.
Gallops along.
Great effort.
Love this man’s writing.
Lloyd Edwards of London.
— Gerald and Lucille are both losers in their own ways, but together they rampage through their lives like bulls in a China shop, leaving shattered bits of crockery behind them wherever they go. The only thing to do as observers of their catastrophic lives is to laugh.
— There is something of all of us in the well-meaning but hopelessly bumbling Gerald and Lucille. While the predicaments they get themselves into make us sigh with exasperation or shake our heads with amusement, their casual incompetence at life makes us laugh a little uneasily as we see something of ourselves in that incompetence.
— The uniqueness of Mark Chamberlain’s witty depiction of two city innocents moving to the countryside to take up farming is that, rather than concentrating on the usual hilarious mistakes made by newcomers to country life with animal husbandry or horticulture, he concentrates on their sometimes side-splitting adventures with their not-quite-typical rural community of misfits.
Dr Lyn Wytenbroeck, Retired Professor of Literature.
Hilarious and unique.
Gallops along.
Great effort.
Love this man’s writing.
Lloyd Edwards of London.