Strain Your Gherkins – Ethel Chop’s Guide to Living in a Modern World marks the recent foray into the world of literature by one Melbourne’s favourite octogenarians, Ethel Chop.
This book does what it says on the label. It’s a ‘modern living guide’ made up of a collection of short essays which give Ethel’s unique take on life, ranging in subject from sex to gun control. As such, this makes for a volume of essays you can dip in and out of at leisure.
Even if you’re not familiar with Ethel Chop you can soon pick up the gist of the character – an eighty plus year old widow who favours nylon but hates just about everyone in the world (apart from her dearly departed husband Reg). The characterisation is not a simple one though, Ethel is multi dimensional, so much so that at times when reading this book I longed for more of a narrative to tell me her life story.
As many of you will already know, Ethel Chop of course is a character created by Melbourne comedian “Andrea Powell”:comic. Until now her incarnation has been restricted to appearances on stage and radio. In these formats Andrea breathes life into the hideous Ethel through costume and some chillingly accurate vocal and physical characterisations. The challenge for her here then is to bring the character to life purely through the written word. This she does through a relentless adherence to the characterisation, using language to beautifully (although it’s strange to be associating the word ‘beautifully’ with Ethel Chop) and accurately contextualise and create Ethel and the world around her.
Although the idea of creating a ‘cranky old person’ character is not unique in comedy, Ethel is a bit special. She has a way of making seemingly innocuous insults, such as referring to readers as ‘ning-nongs’, jump off the page as acidic and affronting barbs. She can lull you into a false comfort zone, only to then to knock you sideways by one of her more disturbing, shocking and hilarious moments (such as the occasional graphic and galling description of Ethel’s prolapse). Nothing is sacred to Ethel.
“Strain Your Gherkins” is a highly enjoyable debut by Ethel Chop, and hopefully this book can create a wider appreciation of the wisdom of this much lived character. As I already mentioned, it makes me crave to hear more about her and I hope she gets another chance to write a book, and this time tell us her life story. That’s if those ning-nongs at the publishing house let her!
Strain Your Gherkins – Ethel Chop’s Guide to Living in a Modern World (as dictated to Andrea Powell) is published by Penguin . For more on Ethel Chop check out her website