Illiterate, booted from school at 14, his childhood and adolescence in a dodgy part of Melbourne were pretty hopeless, in his opinion. He was sure he would end up dead or in life’s gutter before too long. Yet, he writes, “While I had lied and cheated and stolen from an early age, malfeasance never sat well in my heart.”

Vincent Fantauzzo’s memoir is written (with the assistance of Craig Henderson) as he paints – with deceptive simplicity, vividly conveying every person and situation he describes. And the situations in his life – he’s just 48 – are what Mark Twain might have had in mind when he said, “truth is stranger than fiction”.

Early on, Fantauzzo describes bit players such as Giuseppe Colombo – a sleaze who cheated on Vincent’s mother and was punched by him in retaliation – and heart-wrenching humiliations at Centrelink where the simplest tests were impossible. Yet, in another unlikely twist, Fantauzzo’s life opens up through his talent in the boxing ring. The irony is oddly comical. Punching and kicking the lights out of other young men was the socially acceptable side of his frightening street persona. It was something he...