Sandy Myhre, Harper Sports, 288 pp, 2008.
Book Review
Adequately illustrated and comfortable to handle, with a print lay-out that is easy on the eye, Harper Sports has provided a valuable addition to the NZ motor racing library. Its author has given us a comprehensive coverage of the career of this Kiwi motoring star.
Lavish attention is paid to often trivial detail, more than enough to satisfy even the most devoted fan of ‘the rat’, yet possibly leaving other readers pondering what was really in the mind and soul of this intrepid racer. While knowing what he has done, we are still left with the questions: What really makes him tick? Who is he? While strong in information, this account is weak in insight.
At its best when quoting Paul Radisich, or one of his family, friends or colleagues, over all ‘The rat’ comes across as a story contributed by a ferreter of facts looking on from the outside, rather than as a revelation drawn out of the soul of the man himself and then offered to us through the writing skills of another.
‘The rat’ traces the life of one of the outstanding NZ racing drivers of this generation, from his introduction to competitive motor racing as a youngster in a motor mad family in the 1960s to his pinnacle as a pre-eminent driver in the Australasian V8 Supercar series at the time of the book’s publication.
In a bizarre twist of fate, the book opens with a graphic description of Radisich’s body shattering accident at Bathurst in 2006, driving for Team Kiwi, and arrives in our bookstalls just as a parallel horror, once again in an accident at Bathurst, takes him out of the NZ V8 championship (in which he was leading) for the 2008/9 season.
A tidy book but not a great book; a story that devotees of Paul Radisich may well relish having in their hands - and which will not disappoint them - but a story that others could find overpowering in the amount of personal life detail that intrudes on what could otherwise have been a gripping narrative.
