Wardini book review: Anecdotes and stories to fascinate fans

This book is a beacon of support and hope for anyone who wonders what the hell it all means.

Getting Better - Michael Rosen (Penguin, $30)

Reviewed by Louise Ward

REVIEW

Everyone knows Michael Rosen for something – We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, his hilarious YouTube channel of children’s poetry; Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, a guide for children navigating grief. In Getting Better, he offers us his life lessons on going under, getting over it and getting through it.

Michael Rosen has had a lot of life’s “its”. In his early 70s, he caught Covid in his native England during its devastating first wave, spending a biblical 40 days and 40 nights in an induced coma. He relates his recovery as a whirl of confusion, not really comprehending what had happened to him, or just how close to death he had come. There are frightening moments in his rehabilitation, and comedic ones as he sings Search for the Hero whilst he learns to walk again. He shares the lessons he learned about living as he faced dying.

Our hero has more stories to tell of course, surprising the reader again and again with his family history, and what he’s had to cope with: as a young boy, discovering there was a brother lost before he was born; as a young man, learning of his family’s losses and escapes during the Holocaust; losing his own beautiful son, Eddie, to meningitis. Rosen has run the whole gamut of what life can throw at you, but as a self-identified “do-er”, he has a great deal of advice on how he has survived.

There are anecdotes and stories to fascinate fans, told conversationally to invite newcomers to his writing. Written with humour, and the candid prose of a person who sees and embraces the absurdity of life, this book is a beacon of support and hope for anyone who wonders what the hell it all means, and finds comfort in tales of triumph over adversity.