…that I was to ‘get a man drunk’ before I married him because some men ‘become very nasty’, and you wouldn’t be able to tell until they drank. On another occasion, her father, who spends long hours in court prosecuting domestic violence cases, suggests… The woman, Bri explains, did not want to press charges even though she’d been brutally shoved, verbally abused and quite clearly terrified. Never look for justiceīri starts her story with a seemingly innocuous anecdote from her childhood - about going to get a pie for lunch with her policeman dad, when the pair stumble upon a physical fight between a man and a woman - that sets the scene for pretty much the rest of the book. It’s an amazingly courageous, compelling and eye-opening memoir. It not only provides a fierce and unflinching look at how the law, the legal system and society as a whole is biased against women, especially in matters relating to domestic violence and sexual abuse, it also provides a peek into Bri’s battles with body image and eating disorders stemming from her own dark secret.

It’s a really well constructed book that marries the personal with the political. Non-fiction – paperback Allen & Unwin 358 pages 2018.Įven before I was mid-way through Bri Lee’s debut book, Eggshell Skull, I knew it was going to be the best non-fiction title I’d read all year - and that’s saying something seeing as I’d not long finished Chloe Hooper’s The Arsonist, which I thought was extraordinarily good.Ī memoir about working in the Australian judicial system for the first time might not sound terribly exciting, but Bri Lee’s narrative is a force to be reckoned with.

Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee