The Family Law

Book excerpt: Writer and columnist Benjamin Law revisits his joyous and much-loved family memoir, spilling the tea on his family's latest antics The book that inspired the major SBS television series! Meet the Law family – eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide is Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humourist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions. Why won't his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? In this updated edition with a new chapter, Benjamin Law fills us in on his family's antics from the past decade. ‘Benjamin Law manages to be scatagogical, hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time. Every sentence fizzes like an exploding fireball of energy.’—Alice Pung ‘A vivid, gorgeously garish, Technicolour portrait of a family. It's impossible not to let oneself go along for the ride and emerge at the book's end enlightened, touched, thrilling with laughter.’—Marieke Hardy ‘The eccentric, clever and beautifully resonant The Family Law. It's sharply written, brilliantly observed and infused with an authenticity that makes it compelling.’ —Saturday Age ‘Very funny...you may find yourself at times almost barking with laughter’ —The Monthly ‘Law is a writer of great wit and warmth who combines apparently artless and effortless comedian's patter with a high level of technical skill.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘Simultaneously weird and instantly recognisable, the Laws are an Australian family it's well worth getting to know’ —The Enthusiast ‘Wonderful. Everyone should run to their nearest bookshop and buy a copy.’ —Defamer ‘An addictive read.’ —Courier-Mail