THE WORLD-renowned and much-loved British actress, Hayley Mills has touched her magic-wand to a hilarious new book, stating: ‘You’ll fall in love with every single character.’
It is highly unusual for the work of a comparatively obscure and reclusive author to be lauded by a major Hollywood star, but that is precisely what has happened to Hervey Bay writer Tony Matthews and his captivating new novel, Café Puccini.
Reviewed on Amazon as ‘The most entertaining book I have read in a long time’, Café Puccini is a rich, diverse and colourful novel of life in a small Australian country town during the late 1950s, but it is vastly different from most other books of this genre because it utilises many true and almost unbelievable stories which the author has researched during his years as a writer, radio broadcaster
and historian.
The book has been described in the press as, ‘... a hugely funny, feel-good story of exceptional strength and power.’
Synopsis
When Cactus Bob, who had once miraculously survived a crocodile death-roll, begins receiving colour-coded messages on his factory-reject, 1950s, black-and-white television, he has to decide if they have somehow been placed there by the wily old Chinese trader who had sold him the useless TV, or if they really are super-urgent warnings from outer-space.
What happens next is a fabulously funny story you will remember forever.
Café Puccini is a captivating journey into the heart of country Australia and creates a kind of time-capsule of a period when life was fun, simple and full of charm. The only thing to expect from this pulsating novel is the unexpected.
As Hollywood legend Hayley Mills has generously indicated, there is basically no end to the colourful characters in this book. They are wild, funny, irritating, committed, warm-hearted, bemused, devoted, bizarre and just plain stubborn, but drawing them all together in one town, during this particular period, breathes life into a time and place many of us would probably like to visit.
“If time-travel were possible,” Tony speculates, “Café Puccini is almost certainly where everyone would go for lunch and a laugh.”
About the author
Tony Matthews, who lives in Hervey Bay is a highly reclusive Welsh-Australian novelist and historian, and has led an interesting life.
He has been ‘headhunted’ by the CIA; guarded Queen Elizabeth, and witnessed terrifying events, including being at the centre of one of the bloodiest military coups in modern history.
He discovered a royal princess living secretly in Queensland; rescued a drowning man from a flooded Thai river; almost been blown to pieces by a Communist death squad in Manila; volunteered
to paint an orphanage on the banks of the famous River Kwai, and, in a desperate attempt to save U.K. beaches and wildlife, helped to destroy a crippled oil tanker off the coast of Cornwall Arriving in Australia from the U.K. during the early 1970s, Tony hitch-hiked across the country with just $24 in his pocket and with little real understanding of the immensity of the continent.
When he reached the edge of the Nullarbor Plains for example, which was then just a dirt ribbon of track stretching into a waterless infinity, he was the proud possessor of a spare shirt, half a bottle
of tepid Coca-Cola, and a well-thumbed volume of Dylan Thomas poems. The rest, as they say, is history.
Café Puccini has been published by Big Sky Publishing and is available from book-stores and online retailers.
