Things You Get For Free

Michael McGirr

‘It would be impossible not to enjoy the company of Michael McGirr: son, priest, raconteur and writer.’

The Age

‘No travel writing I have read elsewhere has such depth of insight into depression, organised religion and the empires of Other People and What It All Meant.’

Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement

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‘McGirr offers some of the sharpest observations on European foibles since Mark Twain swept through the continent … Readers will come for the humour, but they’ll stay for McGirr’s haunting memories of his path into the priesthood, his mother’s sacrifices and his father’s death.’

Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

At the age of 34, Michael McGirr decides to take his charming and inimitable mum on the honeymoon she and her late husband never got around to having. Between recounting their hilarious travels around Europe and meditating on the historical figures who dot their voyage — everyone from Hemingway to Michelangelo to the quietly heroic people who inspire McGirr’s special brand of faith — he plunges deep into his family history, unearthing sickness and depression but also moments of great love and perseverance. Things You Get for Free is a deeply moving spiritual and intellectual journey that sparkles with McGirr’s singular wit and proves the truth behind his mother’s favourite saying: ‘I know more than you think I know.’

‘It would be impossible not to enjoy the company of Michael McGirr: son, priest, raconteur and writer.’

The Age

‘No travel writing I have read elsewhere has such depth of insight into depression, organised religion and the empires of Other People and What It All Meant.’

Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement

View all reviews

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 198mm × 128mm

Extent:288pp

ISBN (13):9781922070180

RRP:£8.99

Pub date:2 Jan 2014

Rights Held: World

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AUTHOR

Michael McGirr

Michael McGirr, born in 1961, is an essayist, reviewer, prize-winning short-story writer and teacher. A former Jesuit priest, he has been the publisher of Eureka Street and editor of Australian Catholics; and is the author of Unhinged Saints, Tim Winton: the writer and his work, Bypass: the story of a road, and The Lost Art of Sleep. He lives in Melbourne with his wife, Jenny, and their three children.