You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
slow-paced
slow-paced
the fact that this is the book that technically broke my reading slump is upsetting... the fact that VCAA thinks this is a suitable text for vce is upsetting... the fact that this won the stella prize... the fact that this was so insanely boring and nothing ever happened despite all the smug and clunky indicators and promises that something!! would!! happen!!
some highlights:
some highlights:
“We smile. This is banter.”
this is a real line and i think what's terrifying about it - not just what precedes it - but ive developed such a great fear now that this is what my writing sounds like and yes hurrah for sparsity and economy of language whatever but this is lazy and this is ridiculous. We laugh. This is not literature. also going back to what this follows - the author refusing to do any work while the sister kind of just takes everything on board & actually engages in physical labour while miss laveau-harvie "LEANS" on the doorframe and "COMPLIMENTS HER ON HER CAN-DO SPIRIT" and then the sister says "GOOD-NATUREDLY" that she can come in and help and vicki decides to "EXPLAIN HER THEORY OF ECONOMIC LABOUR DISTRIBUTION" and somehow doesn't get punched. this sort of thing happens repeatedly throughout the novel and with minimal complaint from the sister, by the way! and then you get vicki herself moaning about how their relationship is starting to feel a bit tense and she can't seem to understand why that might be. well, yes! that is what tends to happen when you swan around bitching about everything! also this passage ends with VLH seemingly understanding the way all this complete inactivity and inattention might come across, so she pre-emptively-but-not-really tries to defend it - "She knows I am helping where I can [...] going through dozens of drawers..." soooo helpful queen
“Why can’t the helpers work while we are here? How is it our concern that they might need a break?”
another recurring habit of our friend vicki's is her complete and utter disdain for the people she and her sister employ to look after their ailing father. there's a lot of upset around this, how hard it is to find anyone good, with a few carers they did employ getting nicknamed things like "Slut" and "Golddigger". i remember both terms because it caused me to physically startle because of the absolute language snoozefest this was. i haven't mentioned it really but the way she constructs sentences and also time is a wonderful way to drift off in a lovely doze. but anyway these two carers don't really do anything that would make them deserve these titles. i really mean that like the "housekeeping slut" is just "charming" and not very good at cleaning the decades-old rusty pans that vicki hasn't gotten rid of, but apparently she should be executed anyway. but then after this complete SAGA poor old vicki :( the sisters find a suitable candidate and all is well...... OR IS IT???? This is how vicki likes to foreshadow things. and you might fall for it at times! because surely all this drudgery is actually building up to something interesting! surely! but anyway this good new helper slash carer is the answer of their dreams until the foreshadowed climax which is: the carer apparently about-faces on them and says that no one has the father's best interests at heart but her. i don't really disagree at this point! regardless, this is resolved in maybe three sentences and the previous twenty chapters alluding to this terrible incident just crumble into nothing.
following on this - a scene where the sisters debate whether to tell their father about some family news:
following on this - a scene where the sisters debate whether to tell their father about some family news:
“Neither of us wants a casual care worker with limited English to break the news between mopping and sneaking out for a cigarette."
okay!
there is also the chapter where Victoire troubles herself with why these carers would not want to work a shift on Christmas Day & spend that time instead with their own families. she finds it "PERPLEXING". i thought this was humour at first but it goes on a little too long and then you realise this is just what she's like. also when she is funny and i use that word sososososo loosely, it's just calling her father's genitalia "mangear" and talking about sewerage. part of her thought process here:
there is also the chapter where Victoire troubles herself with why these carers would not want to work a shift on Christmas Day & spend that time instead with their own families. she finds it "PERPLEXING". i thought this was humour at first but it goes on a little too long and then you realise this is just what she's like. also when she is funny and i use that word sososososo loosely, it's just calling her father's genitalia "mangear" and talking about sewerage. part of her thought process here:
“I personally would take the triple-time-and-a-half pay rate and the silent calm of the prairie night settling in over everything while it’s still only afternoon, stars snapping tiny Morse code greetings from the icy reaches of the boundless sky, O Holy Night, but what do I know.”
WHY DONT YOU DO IT THENNNNN I cant deal with this like the novel would have you believe she has nothing going on in her life i think she mentions her children twice and her grandchildren once and we know nothing about her life in australia which is why this book was eligible for the stella prize in the first place. i am thinking voter fraud but this is a separate issue.
there's also the actual crux of the book (i think) where vicki's whole thing is that her mother is evil and is trying to kill her father. this manifests itself in a few ways, none of which are interesting or convincing. one scene sees vicki's father drive her and himself across three lanes of traffic. and because he is a bad driver, this will surely kill him. and because her father is not an adult man capable of making his own decisions, this is the fault of her mother, who arranged this all to kill him (?)
“My father indicates a left turn and suddenly I am incensed. Suddenly I understand why we have to go to Shawnessy for lunch. To get to Shawnessy, you turn left at this stop sign, across three lanes of traffic coming toward you from Calgary, mostly eighteen-wheelers going to the US, drivers blood-shot and wired, speeding. Once you get to the median strip, you go left and seek to merge as best you can into the wall of traffic coming north towards you.
My mother knows my father cannot conceivably execute this manoeuvre.”
at a certain point this is on your father! and also you for letting him drive when you're convinced that this will end in tragedy! the fact that this last sentence got its own dramatic line to stand on its own made me Laugh Out Loud
the mother is the most interesting character, and also the reason why this memoir was written, and yet so little effort is spent on her. she isn't real. i don't really understand the motivation of writing this if it's so clearly a point of great hurt. i also don't understand why VICKI was the one to write this, when her sister was arguably more present, more involved, more interesting, and had more to say. it just feels greedy! there should be a story here, but it's just so void of anything remotely engaging. i think the best characteristics of a memoir is the level of insight we are invited to observe - and often, usually, there is some level of increased self-awareness by the end. or at least, throughout. but not here. Never here.
the mother is the most interesting character, and also the reason why this memoir was written, and yet so little effort is spent on her. she isn't real. i don't really understand the motivation of writing this if it's so clearly a point of great hurt. i also don't understand why VICKI was the one to write this, when her sister was arguably more present, more involved, more interesting, and had more to say. it just feels greedy! there should be a story here, but it's just so void of anything remotely engaging. i think the best characteristics of a memoir is the level of insight we are invited to observe - and often, usually, there is some level of increased self-awareness by the end. or at least, throughout. but not here. Never here.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Abandonment
Here's another situation where the ability to award 1/2 stars would have been useful.
Last week Laveau-Harvie was awarded Australia's Stella Prize for this memoir and, being a sucker for a dysfunctional family story - especially one involving manipulative mothers and played daughters - I dived straight into it.
However I'm conflicted.
It's not a particularly long book, so I read it avidly and quickly. The writing is powerful - her passion for the landscape of her childhood is palpable and she describes it lovingly. Some of the descriptions of her own emotions are scarifying. Her commitment to her father seems strong, she writes lovingly of him too, despite his enabling and complicity in whatever went down years earlier.
However, there are enormous gaps in her narrative. She speaks often of her mother's manipulative skills, her fondness for emotional manipulation in particular, her fantasising and her ability to charm those she chooses, but she describes almost no specific instances of emotional neglect or abuse from her childhood. There is no back-story for the mother, in fact as a character she is almost entirely missing from the narrative, becoming more of a looming, threatening presence, rather than someone three dimensional that we can get a bead on.
We never find out what caused the great schism in her family where she and her sister are disinherited and disowned, and how/why her father went along with it is never addressed. She repeatedly speaks of how her mother tried to starve her father to death, offering only her observation of his thin, gaunt frame to back this up.
I feel like this memoir is something of an exorcism and, as such, it's intense and compelling - this is excellent writing (hence the desire for another 1/2 star). I guess the voyeur in me would like just a little more detail on which to judge this apparent monster of a woman.
Last week Laveau-Harvie was awarded Australia's Stella Prize for this memoir and, being a sucker for a dysfunctional family story - especially one involving manipulative mothers and played daughters - I dived straight into it.
However I'm conflicted.
It's not a particularly long book, so I read it avidly and quickly. The writing is powerful - her passion for the landscape of her childhood is palpable and she describes it lovingly. Some of the descriptions of her own emotions are scarifying. Her commitment to her father seems strong, she writes lovingly of him too, despite his enabling and complicity in whatever went down years earlier.
However, there are enormous gaps in her narrative. She speaks often of her mother's manipulative skills, her fondness for emotional manipulation in particular, her fantasising and her ability to charm those she chooses, but she describes almost no specific instances of emotional neglect or abuse from her childhood. There is no back-story for the mother, in fact as a character she is almost entirely missing from the narrative, becoming more of a looming, threatening presence, rather than someone three dimensional that we can get a bead on.
We never find out what caused the great schism in her family where she and her sister are disinherited and disowned, and how/why her father went along with it is never addressed. She repeatedly speaks of how her mother tried to starve her father to death, offering only her observation of his thin, gaunt frame to back this up.
I feel like this memoir is something of an exorcism and, as such, it's intense and compelling - this is excellent writing (hence the desire for another 1/2 star). I guess the voyeur in me would like just a little more detail on which to judge this apparent monster of a woman.
Winner of the Stella Prize for 2019, this book was actually a big disappointment for me. It's fine as far is it goes, but it doesn't go very far. It felt like there wasn't much of a story to tell and what there was was stretched out to its not-very-long length. The author really didn't like her mother. That's about all there is to it, without much in the way of detail to explain it. It felt over-written at times and I kept waiting for some kind of big revelation that never arrived.
reflective
medium-paced
Couldn't put this down. So well constructed. Wonderfully dry humour. This is the type of memoir I love. An excellent read.
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
dark
sad
medium-paced