More than Writers

Sometimes people will say to me, "I only like reading biographies" when I ask if they enjoy fiction.  And I can understand why that might be so: the idea that this is the story of a real person rather than an invented character. I personally will read books across a wide range but do gravitate to fiction above anything else. Nevertheless over Christmas a biography came to me which is one of the most compelling and moving accounts I have ever read. It is the memoir of a man who spent ten years living as an alcoholic drug-crazed recluse high in the New South Wales forest, (with occasional forays down the mountain to the local hippy community to sell his crop of marijuana, and spend his income on  alcohol). This man now holds a PhD and is an academic at the Southern Cross University at their Lismore campus in New South Wales, where he teaches Social Sciences. His name is Dr Gregory Peel Smith, and his story takes him from a severely abusive childhood and period of torment i...