Review: Unloveable by Darren Hayes

Trigger Warnings: Discussions of domestic violence, homophobia and bullying.

Special request: This memoir is incredibly raw and candid. As such, I ask that no one tags the author in the review on social media or anywhere else online. (I'm not trying to start anything here, I just don't want someone to feel forced to see or read what is, essentially, an unsolicited review of a deeply personal work.) 

Darren Hayes memoir may be called Unloveable (the title is taken from one of his most powerful songs) but at its heart is a testimony to the beauty and the power of the love of his mother, Judy, to whom the book is dedicated. Growing up in the rough outer suburbs of Brisbane, Darren Hayes was a kid with a big imagination who was deeply loved by his mum and his older sister, Tracey. He dreamed of being a pop star, worked at the coolest indie record store in town and eventually went on to sell something along the lines of thirty million albums as the front man of Savage Garden--an Australian band that had number one hits across the globe, including two number one hits in the United States. He sang onstage with Pavarotti. He then went on to have a respectable solo career, continuing to sell out venues and releasing an impressive five albums. (Six if you count his side project, We Are Smug.) Unbeknownst to the public who loved his music--and the media who focused on how Savage Garden and Darren Hayes were a true success story--he was hiding a dark secret. It was a secret that could only be hinted at through songs like Two Beds and a Coffee Machine and Crash and Burn. His father was a violent alcoholic who would beat and threaten his wife, his children and the few people who did their best to protect them. And through it all, his mum did her best to protect Darren and his siblings, just as they tried to protect her.

Unloveable is an incredibly raw and compelling memoir. I found it tough going at times, in particular the descriptions of the violence and manipulation experienced in the family home. I had to put it down on occasions to breathe and gather my thoughts, and remind myself that this, this, is testimony to how we never know what someone else is going through--after all, here was the hero whose songs who'd helped me survive the worst parts of high school and it turned out that his childhood had some truly dark moments. School was not easy for him and teachers were often complicit in the bullying he experienced--or in one instance where he was called names an punished for helping a friend style her hair--they were the bullies. There is also a lot of discussion on the author's sexuality--of how he tried to navigate that when people kept trying to tell him who he was--often cruelly--before he had a chance to know who he was. Fortunately, this is also another part of the memoir that is testimony to love--that of his wife Colby who loved him enough to let him go and discover who he was. (She sounds like such a lovely person.) And obviously there is a lot about Savage Garden. He depicts his bandmate Daniel Jones as a cool and distant person who pulled the rug out from under him when the band was at the peak of their success. He is also honest about his time in therapy, the ending of his second marriage and his family history of depression. Obviously, these are tough topics, but they are handled with honesty and class. Hayes writes very well. I've also had a feeling that Unloveable could very easily go viral on BookTok. (Time will tell, I suppose.)

This was an incredible insight into the life of a unique and much loved Australian musician. Hayes has the courage to be vulnerable as he confides in the reader his life story. Although tough going Unloveable is a book that I am most definitely grateful to have read and not because I was looking for the inside story of a band that I was obsessed with when I was in my teens. It is an insight into domestic violence, sexuality, depression and a sage reminder that we don't know what might be going on in another person's life. And, as I said at the start of the review, it is also testimony to the powerful love that his mother had for her children.

Highly recommended.  

Comments

Anonymous said…
thanks for the review. I’m nearly halfway thru the book and I have to say it’s a pretty good read so far. he’s quite ballsy sharing his feelings about what he feels and what he went thru in his life.
12 December 2024 at 23:43
Kathryn White said…
I totally agree, he showed so much courage by sharing his experiences and feelings.
13 December 2024 at 09:35
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more