Sunday Best - A Memoir

by Robbi Neal

Imagine you grew up in a strict Baptist home where cooking on Sunday was forbidden and where women were considered to have no future other than to be a man's helpmeet. What if you refused to accept your God-given place and ran off with a heroin addict? And just as you found your true love, the life you had dreamt of could be snatched from you?

Robbi Neal was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 40. Faced with the possibility of an early death, she decided to write this memoir for her children. She details her life and includes her strict upbringing, memories of her eccentric gran and her abusive father. It is a story told with gripping immediacy that takes us through her many experiences: speaking in tongues; art school; theological school, where she was propositioned by a Jesuit priest; and her decision to leave the church.

Sunday Best concludes with a devastating account of Robbi's diagnosis and treatment. Far more than a story of survival, this is both a spiritual and emotional journey told with great warmth, humour and courage. Robbi Neal lives in Buninyong with her husband Pete and their children. She has been a Baptist pastor, a welfare worker, an artist whose work at the Castlemaine Fringe Festival was banned by the Catholic Church, a single mother, a retailer and freelance writer. Sunday Best is her first book and was developed as part of the HarperCollins/Varuna awards program.

480 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 2004

About the author

Robbi Neal's first book SUNDAY BEST, a memoir was developed as part of the HarperCollins/Varuna awards program and published by HarperCollins in 2004. AFTER BEFORE TIME, which told stories of indigenous life in a remote community, was published in 2016. THE ART OF PRESERVING LOVE, a story that spanned 25 years from 1905 to 1930 was published in 2018 under the pen name Ada Langton.

Robbi also paints and is currently working towards an exhibition scheduled for 2022 at Redot Fine Art Gallery, Singapore. She is a mama of five wonderful humans (you're welcome world).

She has lived in country Victoria, Australia, for most of her life and lives only a few of blocks from where her novel THE SECRET WORLD OF CONNIE STARR (2022) is set. She loves to walk down Dawson Street past the church her grandfather preached in, the same church with the same columns that appear in in this book.

When Robbi isn't writing, she is painting, or reading or hanging out with her family and friends, all of whom she adores. She loves procrasti-cooking, especially when thinking about the next chapter in her writing. She also loves cheese, any cheese, all cheese and lemon gin or dirty martinis, the blues, and more cheese.

Reviews

[Jenny]

I could so identify with this and knew some of the people in this candid autobiography.Actually even looks like me on the front cover

[Bel Vidal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sunday Best is an autobiography told with riveting immediacy. Neal achieves this by using the present tense throughout, and by instinctively changing the tone of her narrative voice. As a child, she speaks to us with the endearing naivety of a child. Ever so subtly the voice switches, as the years go by, to that of a teenager and later to that of an adult.
A healthy sense of humour permeates Neal’s account, even when relating the most sombre and traumatic events: her chemotherapy treatments, the surgery that follows, the domestic violence at her parental home, or the night that her father announces that every Tuesday night will be ‘nudist night,’ and proceeds to draw the curtains – the only housework the thirteen year old Robbi has ever seen him do.
Neal is relentless in the portrayal of her eccentric parents, but she is just as honest about her own shortfalls – never does she paint herself as flawless heroine, nor does she dwell on her mistakes and troubles. She also admits that this is her truth, and if someone else were to tell their version of the same events, it would probably be unrecognisable from hers.
In a talk given at the Popular Writer’s Festival a few years ago, Neal mentioned that the media showed little interest in interviewing her because her book wasn’t ‘literary.’ This made me think of the ‘literary’ books I have read recently, among them the 2004 winner of the Miles Franklin award, which was one of the most excruciatingly dreary and pretentious books I have come across in a long time.
Indeed Sunday Best is far too engaging, memorable and unassuming to be literary, and that is why it has reached and captivated a much wider audience, despite of the media’s disinterest. This memoir is much more than a story of survival against adversity and religious fundamentalism; it is one of those books that help us appreciate the hope, faith and love that make our lives a worthwhile journey, whatever our beliefs, blessings and misfortunes.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this little gem up from a charity shop, and I'm so glad i did. A great autobiography, told light heartedly despite many trials and tribulations. I especially liked the tales of the authors childhood, and found myself laughing out loud a couple of times. It becomes a little darker towards the end, but it has left me wanting to find out more about Robbi Neal. Thank you for sharing you story.

[Jill Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different upbringing to me as Baptist and in the eastern states. Meaningful autobiography true story that could apply to many people - if only they told you. Many people keep secrets hidden. Could relate to some of the issues - school, shopping, small towns, could be in south west of WA just as much as Dalyesford. The strict religious upbringing was foreign to me. The brush with cancer is something that many families face all the time. I am glad that Robbi Neal shared her story for her children and also for the wider community so more people can understand what cancer patients/survivors/health workers and families go through.

[Sara Aquilina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn’t put this down. It was terribly sad, a story that will stay with me for quite some time.

[Kylie Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't put this one down