A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey

After reading this book I thought Albert Facey had an AMAZING life. From the age of 8 he did everything there was to do, he experienced every type of situation available, from having his mother abandon him, an employer whip him, getting lost in the bush for over a week and finding the perfect wife and having a family. He lived a very full life; especially career wise (not surprising considering his working life started when he was 8) and travelled all over the country with one job or another. I really liked the chapters about his time in the army (before and during the First World War) as they reminded me of the letters Great Granddad Moore sent to his family, in fact if I hadn’t known better I would have thought they were written by the same man. I am glad he was able to live to see his book published and made a bestseller as your family will always tell you your creation is great, but the only real way to know is from strangers paying you hard earned money for your work. The only problem I had with it was that he went into a bit too much detail about the mundane stuff. He could have cut out many sentences about having cups of tea or what he had to eat (how did ha remember that clearly after 50 years or more anyway?) and put more detail into the last 20 or so years of his life. More information about his children for example. I wonder what he could have written if he’d had the time and skills earlier on in his life.

 

Finished on 22 March 2009