Chalk and Cheese: A Fabrication
Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen
Hybrid, $24.99
Cameron Woodhead Spectrum Saturday, September 6, 2025, p11
   Comic writing partners Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen will be familiar to some from their Grafton Everest books – a lively and long-running Australian series of political satires featuring a Rabelaisian academic (with a touch of Sir Les Patterson) getting himself into absurd scrapes.

In Chalk and Cheese, they break fresh comedic ground. Two journalists with opposing political views are admitted to the same aged care home. Conservative broadcaster Bill Bradley has made a career from savaging the left, so he’s ruffled to discover that his nemesis, radical socialist Ben Curran, is resident.

As if having a stroke wasn’t bad enough. Politically, these antagonists couldn’t be more different, but they find common ground when residents gravitate to them with their problems – from elder abuse to discriminatory regulations. Together with their tech-savvy grandkids, these career enemies join forces to agitate for change.

Chalk and Cheese weaves a rumbustious satire of political polarisation into a gentler probing of social issues surrounding ageing and end-of-life care.

Cameron Woodhead 
Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald & The Age
Saturday, September 6, 2025, p11