The Rules of Backyard Cricket, Jock Serong

The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Jock Serong
291 Pages

Here I sit (in my studio) this wonderful grey Thursday,  drinking my morning coffee and nibbling on some Dark Chocolate Digestive's which I picked up from Thomas Dux on my way home from Book Club last night.

The book we discussed at Book Club was The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong. I would never in a million years have chosen to read this book. I'm not really one for cricket, so I would have written this off in an instant had I come across it in a bookstore. This is one of the reasons I love being in a book club, it pushes you into territories that you wouldn't have necessarily wandered into on your own.

The Rules of Backyard Cricket was loved by all in the group. Everyone mentioned the beautiful writing by Jock Serong. Cricket is a running thread through the book, but you realise that it is only a vehicle used to share the story of these two brothers, Daz and Wally. So you don't really need to care about cricket or even know about it, surprisingly for me, I actually enjoyed reading and learning about the game through reading this book.

Melbourne 1976, is when the story of Daz begins, however the actual story begins with Daz/Darren being stuffed and locked in a car boot and this is where his story begins.

It's not a happy book, there are many twists and turns, and most of us were surprised by what unfolded. The ending will leave you wondering, and in fact many of us book clubbers read and re-read the last chapter a few times in attempt to put the missing pieces together.

Jock Serong will be coming to the bookstore for an event, and I'll be looking forward to that and finding out more about him and the book.

The next book club read is going to be Hisham Matar's The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between.