Some writers find their voice in a classroom. Godfrey Bonavia found his in a Malta primary school competition back in 1964, and he never really put the pen down again. Six decades later, that same instinct for a good story has grown into a two volume collection called Paraphernalia, a body of work that carries the reader from the sun baked streets of Malta to the wide open spaces of Perth, Australia, where Bonavia has lived since 1985.
What makes Paraphernalia stand out on a crowded shelf is the range packed into it. One story might drop you into a quiet suburban house that sits on top of a hidden fortune. The next might place you in the middle of a wartime siege on a Mediterranean island, or inside a courtship that unfolds through five very different possible endings. Bonavia moves between drama, humor, history, and romance with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime paying attention to people.
That attention is not accidental. Bonavia is a qualified therapist, and it shows in the way his characters carry their burdens. His stories tend to circle back to a simple idea: everyone is dealing with something, and everyone deserves a listening ear. He says as much directly in his dedication, offering himself as that ear to any reader who needs one.
Family runs through his life the way plot runs through his fiction. Bonavia and his wife raised four sons, now settled across different states, and the couple has six grandchildren. He writes, by his own account, for people with limited time and a lot on their plate, the kind of reader who wants a story that rewards a short break at work or a bus ride across town rather than demanding a weekend.
With Paraphernalia and its sequel, Paraphernalia: Volume 2, now both available, Bonavia gives readers a chance to dip in and out of an entire career’s worth of storytelling, one short, satisfying tale at a time.
