Chadstone, God, Two And A Half Men, Swine Flu…Deveny basically tears them all a new one.  It’s been a bad year for pigs and pigs in suits. The only thing for it is a good dose of Catherine Deveny, who each week in the Age puts everything into perspective with her trademark iconoclastic wit.

Free to a Good Home includes her thoughts on gifted children and breakfast television, sexy billboards and the bill of rights. She reflects on her youngest child’s first day at school, and on how to be happy in hard times.

Fearlessly funny and always provocative, Deveny is the perfect antidote to the modern world’s ills.

Can anyone explain why I did this? I went to the chemist and bought this crap I put on my face to make me look younger. I put the jar on the counter. The chemist girl said, ‘Is this stuff any good?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘I’m sixty.’ Eyes like saucers, mouth agape, she gasped, ‘OH MY GOD! Sixty! Toula! Fatima! Kelly! Come and check out this old lady. She’s sixty!’ So the other chemist girls scurried over and after a bit of oohing and aahing one said, ‘Oh my God! Sixty? You look like you’re forty-five!’

I’m forty. Chemist girls, one. Smart-arse, zero.

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In 2008 the Pope came to Sydney, petrol prices soared and Australia proudly became the fattest nation on earth. Big Brother got the chop, Sam Newman mauled a mannequin and the Logies were as wonderfully bad as ever. Thank goodness for Catherine Deveny. Always ready with a subversive aside or a provocative question, each week in the Age she brings her passionate, irreverent wit to bear on the big issues of the day.

Say When collects Deveny’s funniest, sharpest and most outrageous columns from the past year – and some unpublished work, as well. Whether taking on God, climate change or Kerri-Anne Kennerley, she is sure to leave you begging for more.

“We’ve won the battle of the fatties. Australia is now officially, according to some bunch of folk with clipboards in one hand and flab pinchers in the other, the world’s fattest nation. Go, you good thing! Get stuck into those pies! Potato cakes? I’ll have three. One for mum, one for dad and one for the country. Let’s use our newfound status as the Tubby Country as a tourist pitch to attract chubby chasers and fat fetishists. Where the bloody hell am I? Down the shops, buying dim sims.”

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Each week in the pages of the Age, Catherine Deveny tackled the big issues of modern life with hilarity and passion and in her own inimitable style. From 4WD owners to Nick Giannopolous to women who take their husband’s name, Deveny isn’t backward in coming forward. It’s Not My Fault They Print Them collects Deveny’s funniest, most biting work, published and unpublishable (till now). Bound to spark heated debate and riotous laughter, it includes her views on elective caesareans, private education, McLeod’s Daughters, Sam Newman and much, much more. Prepare to be tickled, cajoled, outraged, baited and amused.

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Featuring Destroying the Joint in Twelve Easy Lessons by Catherine Deveny

A fabulously provocative collection by women ready to destroy the joint.

In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said a society needs the political participation of women to reach its full potential. Commentator Allan Jones reacted to his by saying: ‘Women are destroying the joint . . . Honestly.’

People around the country responded with passion, disbelief and hilarity. In Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World, Australian women reply to Jones’s comment and the broader issues of sexism and misogyny in our culture.

Edited by Jane Caro, this entertaining and thought-provoking collection includes essays, analysis, memoir, fiction, satire, polemic and tweets from some of our best and brightest.

Available as paperback, kindle e-book and iTunes e-book.

Foreword by Catherine Deveny

Growing up Greek in Thornbury; erasing the memory of an ex-boyfriend in Westgarth; fear of kites at Edwardes Lake Park; a young girl escaping from Lalor in the 80s makes a surprise discovery in Reservoir.

With new work by emerging and established writers, Stamping Ground will take you on surprising journeys through the familiar and unfamiliar world of Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

‘I grew up in Reservoir. If you are not familiar with Reservoir it’s not a place where people live it’s a place where people’s cousins who just got out of jail live. And it’s the only place in the world apart from Russia where people get married in track suits, and they have bouncers in the supermarket. I’m thinking of doing a one woman show about my teenage years and calling it Reservoir Dog …’

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Featuring The Narcissism of Motherhood by Catherine Deveny

Good Mother. Bad Mother. Proud Mother. Guilty Mother.
Modern motherhood is riddled with contradictions and myths.

In Mothermorphosis, some of Australia’s most talented writers and storytellers share their own experiences of motherhood. In telling their stories they articulate the complex internal conflicts, the exhilaration and the absurdity of the transformation that takes place when we become mothers.
We read about the yearning for a child, the private and public expressions of maternal love, the questioning, uncertainty and unexpected delight, as well as unfathomable loss.
Mothermorphosis reveals that there is no ‘right’ version of this epic experience and no single tale that could ever speak for all mothers. Yet it is in reading about other women’s experiences—the hard bits, the joyous bits and even the ridiculous bits—that we can become more compassionate, not just to other mothers but hopefully to ourselves.

Paperback, eBook and iTunes.