Author(s): Meshel Laurie

General

The Fence-painting Fortnight of Destiny is a humorous, heartening and breathtakingly honest memoir about the lengths one country girl has gone to in a quest for reinvention and self-acceptance. Meshel's mission takes her from Toowoomba, Queensland, to the longed-for lights of Melbourne's stand-up stages, where she finally finds her tribe and lives the life that had filled her Catholic high-school daydreams. Her perspective of Melbourne's comedy scene of the 1990s is intimate, candid and more than a little surprising as she shares memories about the other up-and-comers of the day, including Dave Hughes, Wil Anderson, Julia Morris, Kitty Flanagan, Rove and Alan Brough. There's also an eye-opening detour through Melbourne's sex industry, thanks to the day job that came dangerously close to becoming a career. Meshel works her way into TV and radio, sometimes taking three steps forward and two-and-a-half back, but always motivated to keep going by the fear of an alternate destiny, back there in Toowoomba, waiting to claim her. When life returns Meshel to Queensland, she's forced to face the girl she's spent her life trying to outrun. The result is a rebooted Meshel 2.0 , with added babies, Buddhism and relationship brouhaha. Will it all work out brilliantly, like it did in her mind during high-school maths? Luckily, now that she's Buddhist she has reincarnation to fall back on if things don't work out...