Law School

Law School: Sex and Relationship Advice by Benjamin Law
Published: 2017
Length: 125 pages

We visited quite a few bookstores while we were in Australia last year. I was keeping an eye out while browsing for books I might not come across in Canada, and this seemed like a fun one. It’s a collection of articles from a humour sex and relationship advice column in a Melbourne-based magazine called The Lifted Brow. People write in about their various situations and Benjamin Law and his mother, Jenny Phang, both respond. Seeing both responses on the same page is just hilarious, and both Benjamin and his mother seem like very open and funny people.

It’s a brilliant idea that just works so well. There’s nothing professional about the advice. In fact, occasionally Benjamin has to comment on his mother’s response to make sure no one follows the advice too closely. It’s just a bit of fun. The illustrations in this, by Beatrix Urkowitz, are great and work perfectly.

Benjamin Law has a couple of books out that I’d like to pick up. The Family Law is a memoir of growing up as a first-generation Australian in a Malaysian family, and Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East follows his travels through Asia to explore how his life may have been different if he had grown up as a gay man in Asia rather than Australia.