Hello, Beautiful!

Scenes from a Life

A memoir in parts, from one of Australia's best-loved playwrights.

Hannie Rayson - writer, mother, daughter, sister, wife, romantic, adventuress, parking-spot optimist - has spent a lifetime giving voice to others in the many roles she has written for stage and television.

In her new book, she shines the spotlight on herself. This collection of stories from a dramatic life radiate with the great warmth and humour that has made Hannie one of the best-known playwrights in the country. From a childhood in Brighton to a urinary tract infection in Spain, from a body buried under the house to a play on a tram, Hello, Beautiful! captures a life behind the scenes - a life of tender moments, hilarious encounters and, inevitably, drama.

Hannie Rayson is a playwright and screenwriter. Her works - including Hotel Sorrento, Inheritance and Life After George - have been performed around Australia and internationally. She has been awarded two Australian Writers' Guild Awards, four Helpmann Awards, two NSW Premier's Literary Awards and a Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Her play Life After George was the first play to be nominated for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Hannie lives in Melbourne.

‘So beautifully written, so funny, so insightful and so obviously written by a warm and appealing human being.’ David Williamson

‘Smart, witty, warm, self effacing and hilarious. Each chapter is a shining gem—a passionate view, a formative experience, a mortifying anecdote. Hannie Rayson’s insight, honesty and ear for dialogue as one of Australia’s foremost playwrights is beyond dispute. Here she turns her talents to memoir and those closest to her with results so disarming and entertaining I didn’t want it to end.’ Kat Stewart

‘Hannie paints with vivid colours. Her development as a writer and a woman is richly portrayed, with all the shades of intense feeling and emotion that her dramatic characters share spilling from the page in a riot of evocative memories. Hello, Beautiful! is as nourishing and delicious as home-made soup.’ Noni Hazlehurst

‘Hannie’s writing shows the extraordinary truth of ordinary life—that it is, in fact, anything but ordinary. I was glued to this delightful book.’ Sigrid Thornton

‘Think of this as bottled sunshine….her anecdotes about family, friends and the community she belongs to, are told with perfect comic timing and one of the most acute ears in the business for dialogue.’ Caroline Baum, Booktopia Buzz

‘This is a book that welcomes readers generously into its author’s secure and stimulating private world – and makes us wish, as we reluctantly close the final chapter, that we could be there for real.’ Adelaide Advertiser

‘A book of beautifully crafted, free-flowing vignettes that illuminates with warmth and humour.‘ Australian

‘Every chapter tickles.’ Country Living

‘Rayson’s vignettes are perfectly constructed and she is a virtuoso of self-deprecating humour.’ Sydney Morning Herald

‘With her cooly curious eye and facility for dialogue, Rayson has chronicled key moments in the nation’s social history…Hello, Beautiful! is a scrapbook of Rayson’s family foibles, thoughts and simple dreams.’ Big Issue

‘It was a pleasure to read such a refreshing take on the genre of memoir, written with skill, warmth and optimism. Like every good theatrical experience, you are left wanting more.’ Good Reading

‘Beautifully structured and articulated, not to mention hilarious….Rayson reels you in with her storytelling.’ Australian Book Review

‘An easy, entertaining read, written in a chatty, friendly, open style.’ Starts at Sixty