Scan barcode
festival_maven_m's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Beautiful. A memoir of mothering and life connected to the land.
serendipitysbooks's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Graft is a memoir which traces a year on a Tasmanian sheep farm. The book is divided into sections, one for each season, with each being composed of multiple components - journal entries recounting farm events particularly those related to lambing, ornithological field guide entries accompanied by a sketch of the relevant bird, dictionary like entries entitled Words it Might be Useful to Know, and regular standard memoir type prose sections. It sounds eclectic but it all came together for me. I especially enjoyed the bird sections, all the more so since I’ve now seen many of the species mentioned, MacKellar’s musings on motherhood especially the changes as her youngest child approaches the end of his school years, her recollections of a childhood marked by a disabled brother - an experience I also share, and the difficulties of farming in a rapidly changing climate. I found it to be honest and relatable. Her love of nature, farming and her family shone through.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism and Animal death
treesofreverie's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Death of parent, and Ableism
Moderate: Child abuse
curatoriallyyours's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
This book is a beautifully written account of one year on a Tasmanian sheep farm in a time of drought but it is so much more than that. Maggie MacKellar is so reflective in her writing and she seems to interrogate everything her life entails - the ethics of farming, her relationship to nature, motherhood, identity, family relationships. It is a genuinely beautiful read.
I found the sections where she talks about growing up with her profoundly disabled older brother quite confronting - in the context of this book it makes sense that she centres herself in that aspect of the narrative but I am still deciding how I feel about it over all - whether or not it is right for him not to be centred in the story of his own life - whether or not this should have been included at all, given that it is not the central focus of the book and, therefore, cannot hope to show all his complexity as a human. I find it hard to read about the negative impact of growing up with a profoundly disabled sibling because so often the tendency for an outsider seems to be to commiserate with the non-disabled sibling about how hard their life must have been and, conversely, not to recognise how hard the disabled sibling’s life has been and will continue to be until they die. I think these narratives can dehumanise a disabled person - reduce them to the ways in which their existence is difficult for other people, which it certainly may be but that is only a fraction of the picture of who they are as a person. I appreciated that the author, in the ‘thank you’ section, alluded to the fact that she had not presented her brother in his complex entirety, but I am undecided as to whether this footnote makes up for what had been said in the rest of the book. If this part hadn’t been there, this book would have been a solid 5-stars for me. Upon reflection at a later point I may decide to change it to a 5 but for now I am rating it 4.5 stars.
I found the sections where she talks about growing up with her profoundly disabled older brother quite confronting - in the context of this book it makes sense that she centres herself in that aspect of the narrative but I am still deciding how I feel about it over all - whether or not it is right for him not to be centred in the story of his own life - whether or not this should have been included at all, given that it is not the central focus of the book and, therefore, cannot hope to show all his complexity as a human. I find it hard to read about the negative impact of growing up with a profoundly disabled sibling because so often the tendency for an outsider seems to be to commiserate with the non-disabled sibling about how hard their life must have been and, conversely, not to recognise how hard the disabled sibling’s life has been and will continue to be until they die. I think these narratives can dehumanise a disabled person - reduce them to the ways in which their existence is difficult for other people, which it certainly may be but that is only a fraction of the picture of who they are as a person. I appreciated that the author, in the ‘thank you’ section, alluded to the fact that she had not presented her brother in his complex entirety, but I am undecided as to whether this footnote makes up for what had been said in the rest of the book. If this part hadn’t been there, this book would have been a solid 5-stars for me. Upon reflection at a later point I may decide to change it to a 5 but for now I am rating it 4.5 stars.