It Has No Brain. No Heart. No Name It’s the Best Narrator You’ll Read This Year

A twelve-year-old steals it and makes the worst decision of his Christmas with it. A police sergeant hides it from his wife. A priest carries it all the way to the Vatican. A rubbish tip nearly ends it.

Through all of it, one small blue Bic lighter watches. Waits and narrates.

My Life As A Cigarette Lighter is the debut novel from Australian author Cath Cunningham, and it is unlike anything else on the shelves right now. Freshly minted in a factory and burning with a single purpose, the lighter sets out to do exactly what it was made for: ignite things. What it does not account for is the chaos, tenderness, and sheer unpredictability of the humans it will pass through on the way.

Across fifteen chapters, the lighter moves through a cast of characters as varied as the city itself. A shared flat of teenagers. A family Christmas with too much goodwill and not enough sense. A police evidence drawer. A train carriage derailed by a determined ticket inspector. A bong that goes spectacularly wrong. None of these scenes are played for easy laughs. Each one is observed by the narrator with patient, affectionate curiosity. A willingness to see people as they actually are, rather than how they would like to be seen.

This is where Cunningham’s writing earns its keep. Her comedy is precise without being cruel. Her pathos is genuine without tipping into sentiment. She has the short-story writer’s instinct for the telling detail and the novelist’s patience for lives that don’t resolve neatly. The themes running beneath the humour, purpose, belonging, loneliness, what it means to be useful to another person, land quietly and stay with you.

Readers who love Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared or Rachel Joyce’s warmly observed character studies will find a similarly inventive and generous storytelling voice in Cunningham. But the book stands entirely on its own. It is funny in the way that good writing is funny: not through jokes, but through truth.

With a high-concept hook, a wide general readership, and strong gift-book appeal, My Life As A Cigarette Lighter is a title that sells itself. Hand it to a customer and let the first page do the rest.

About The Book

Title: My Life As A Cigarette Lighter

Author: Cath Cunningham

Genre: Literary fiction / Comic fiction

Status: Available now

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