Don't Laugh: Keeping the Joneses Up, Vol. 1

As a white haired, green-eyed, 'black sheep' growing up in a fire zone, Sacha (then Sally) feels from a young age she doesn't fit in with her family or general environment and struggles, literally, to breathe. But when a doctor recommends ballet as a cure for her ills, though her Russian teacher tells her she is 'not built for ballet', she finds a way to bend her build to ballet and to breathe easier, succeeding against the odds to go on to win national ballet scholarships and become the youngest star of the Sydney City Ballet. But when you prove a Russian wrong, you are generally asking for trouble and, sure enough, ballet turns out not to be the escape she had hoped for and there is a price to pay for all that easy breathing… A tragicomic tale of girlhood from the grandniece of Sir Charles Lloyd Jones, former Chairman of David Jones and the founding Chairman of the ABC, and the granddaughter of his brother Eric who was not knighted for his services to retail or the broadcasting arts, because at just 38 he gave up his senior management position in the family firm to play 'gentleman's tennis' on the other side of the world (Wimbledon) and lost his money, wife and good name in the process. This is the first of three volumes of memoir in which his granddaughter seeks, tongue in cheek-ish, to recover something of her family's lost standing by doing what she can to 'Keep the Joneses up'. Don't Laugh. 'One of the funniest memoirs I have read.' Samantha Miles, Bad Apple Press (AU) 'Full of wonderful moments of nuanced wit.' Steve Braunias, The Spinoff (NZ)