Julian Corkle Is A Filthy Liar
By DJ Connell
HarperCollins, $32.99
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

This debut novel is like a cross between Aussie movie Muriel’s Wedding and US writer Augusten Burrough’s hilarious memoir Running With Scissors. While  it seems from the cover it could be a YA novel it has a much wider appeal.  It’s a coming-of-age story with extra laughs, lashings of quirkiness and a very memorable hero.

Julian Corkle is a young boy growing up in small-town Tasmania. From the outset Julian is a little bit special. While his Mum reckons he has star quality, his Dad is horrified by the copious signs his son is different and remains determined to turn him into a proper cricket-playing Aussie kid.
But Julian’s yearning for glamour and fame, his flair with hair product, his taste for flamboyant bedroom drapes and his sheer pizzazz cannot be crushed out of him. And when he finds a kindred spirit in Jimmy Budge, growing up gay in the suburbs suddenly seems a lot more interesting.

There are some fabulous quips. “Pubic hair was an obsession with me. It was like panache. You either had it or you didn’t,” declares the pubescent Julian at one point. There’s hilarity in his inability to get pretty much anything right and in his failure to realise when he’s being an egg. But there’s a serious side to this story too. It’s about the trials of growing up different, the cruelty of kids when they spot a sign of weakness, the terror of being singled-out as a “Poof” and the unpleasantness of bullying on all levels.

So it came as a surprise to me when the author D.J Connell turned out to be a Hamilton born, middle-aged woman. The book, while comic and camped up, seems so perceptive and essentially truthful. It paints such an affectionate portrait of a young male misfit that I’d assumed it had to be at least partly autobiographical.
While the story descends too far into farce in the end, Julian Corkle is a fabulous creation and I can see exactly why film rights have been snapped up so quickly. I just hope the movie manages to be as fresh and funny as the novel.

Footnote:
Nicky Pellegrino, in addition to being a succcesful author of popular fiction, (her former title The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009 while herlatest, Recipe for Life was published by Orion last week), is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above piece was first published on 11 April.

Footnote 2:
This is what The Bookman had to say about this title on 11 March:

Julian Corke is a Filthy Liar on the other hand is a mad romp of a yarn featuring mainly the filthy liar himself. Indeed he does lie his way through school and a series of dead-end jobs in Tasmania entertaining us all the way along with his adventures and fantasies as he seeks to become a TV star- had me laughing from the first sentence until the last.
This is a first novel by D.J.Connell, NZ-born and educated, (graduate of Waikato University), who now lives in London. Her second novel, Sherry Cracker Gets Normal will be published in 2011.
Impressively movie rights to Julian Corkle have already been sold to  accliamed film makers Sarah Radclyffe and Marian Mcgowan who have a long list of suvccessful movies to their names inlcuding My Beautful Laundrette.