You Gotta Have Balls
Brett, Lily

RRP
A$22.95

"Men have more straightforward relationships. They don't hang up phones in a huff with each other. They don't feud and not speak for months over insignificant issues. Men don't weep at something another man says. Or hate them for years because of it... "

Ruth Rothwax likes women, but she wants them to like each other more, and not be so aggressive, so competitive with other females. She's even thinking of starting a women's group: a small group of smart women who'll care about each other and collectively gain more power for themselves and others. And Ruth practises what she preaches: every day she shows support for her close female friends. She's a good friend to have. If only all women were like her.

Then her father's sixty-seven-year-old busty blonde girlfriend enters the scene, with a suitcase full of plans. So as Ruth's carefully calibrated life is turned upside down, all her sisterly solidarity, all her "we're here to support and nurture each other" ideals fly out the window.

You Gotta Have Balls is Lily Brett's funniest novel to date, and demonstrates in laugh-out-loud prose a writer whose brilliance for tragedy is rivalled only by her genius for comedy.

Author Information

Lily Brett was born in Germany and came to Melbourne with her parents in 1948. Her first book, The Auschwitz Poems, won the 1987 Victorian Premier's Award for poetry, and both her fiction and poetry have won other major prizes, including the 1995 NSW Premier's Award for Fiction for Just Like That. Her books of essays, In Full View, New York, and Between Mexico and Poland, were critical successes, and her more recent novel, Too Many Men, was a bestseller both in Australia and in Germany. She is married to the Australian painter David Rankin, and lives in New York.