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A review by boyblue
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
4.0
That was the single heaviest book I've ever read, a lead weight that sinks straight to the pit of your stomach.
Tumarkin is relentless in her pursuit of trauma. She chases it through Warsaw's wartime ghettos, through Australian school yards quaking in the aftershocks of teen suicide, through the cracks in the justice system that the same maligned victims keep falling through. She corners it and forces it to talk back to us. It's not comfortable but deeply powerful.
Western society is not good at dealing with death. We're immunised from it by modernity. It's not something we discuss and the way we conduct our lives and even our funerals seems to skirt around it and pretend it's not there. I think that's partly why discussions about it are so heavy for us, because we never have them.
But this book isn't about the trauma of death, it's about the way trauma tears at the fabric of life.
The topics that Tumarkin addresses are the ones we rarely talk about. Topics too heavy for our daily lives. Yet they're also the topics that are the most important for a society to discuss. She mentions the twin feelings a Holocaust survivor has; wanting to tell everyone what happened so that it never happens again, and never wanting to talk about it again because no one could possibly understand and no words could ever explain.
Empathy burnout or fatigue is something that may make its way into the DSM in the next edition. It's something paramedics, or Emergency ward doctors get. But it's also there in therapists and workers in aged care. In fact I'd say at some stage we've all experienced some form of empathy burnout and if you haven't this book will get you close to it. It's got to be one of the most confronting feelings for a human being, you're dealing with serious life-ending or life-changing trauma and you can't feel anything. The worst parts of other people's lives and you are dead emotionally.
With a book like this it's always going to be hard to critique. It's just so heavy and I feel so unworthy. However, we're here and this is what this site is for.
The first section ‘Time Heals All Wounds’ needs to be read by everyone. Published on its own it would be one of the best essays of the last decade. So I implore you to go to the bookstore or library and just read those first 44 pages. However, I also warn you, be prepared to be hit by a fully laden freight train.
The other sections are equally powerful but their power is not as explicit. People seem concerned over whether they're chapters, or essays. Whether this book is a novel or a long series of interviews. It doesn't have a recognisable form and that's the point. You can't take all of this topic material and force it into an existing form, it is by nature convoluted and messy. Form follows function.
The last section must have been hard for Tumarkin to include because though it's not right to compare trauma and measure out what is worse or more unbearable, her own diary style personal experiences just don't hit with the same weight as the other material. I've struggled with whether it was self-indulgent and narcissistic to re-centre the book on her own life and trauma at the end and I guess in many ways that's part of what she's examining but I didn't enjoy that part.
Sometimes I felt Tumarkin reached for quotes when her own thought processes didn't resolve and this seemed more of a crime from someone who can create her own beauty with the pen. Though I have to say nearly every quote is spot on. The reference to Harry Potter really dropped the ball though. Sure J.K. Rowling said she wouldn't let magic bring people back to life but then she copied the bible and did a whole resurrection scene. Which also reminds me there were many times I thought the chance to examine religious/spiritual teachings and approaches were almost deliberately passed over.
The one thing that is always present in these narratives, it surfaces again and again but never gets a full examination, is time. It seems that time is the only solace, the only salve to deep trauma. Not that "time heals all wounds" because Tumarkin explicitly confronts that and says the wounds don't heal, you come to live with them. More that time allows you to forget. Not in an active way but by cramming more life between you and the event eventually it fades. Somehow I don't think that's going to happen with this book.
Tumarkin is relentless in her pursuit of trauma. She chases it through Warsaw's wartime ghettos, through Australian school yards quaking in the aftershocks of teen suicide, through the cracks in the justice system that the same maligned victims keep falling through. She corners it and forces it to talk back to us. It's not comfortable but deeply powerful.
Western society is not good at dealing with death. We're immunised from it by modernity. It's not something we discuss and the way we conduct our lives and even our funerals seems to skirt around it and pretend it's not there. I think that's partly why discussions about it are so heavy for us, because we never have them.
But this book isn't about the trauma of death, it's about the way trauma tears at the fabric of life.
The topics that Tumarkin addresses are the ones we rarely talk about. Topics too heavy for our daily lives. Yet they're also the topics that are the most important for a society to discuss. She mentions the twin feelings a Holocaust survivor has; wanting to tell everyone what happened so that it never happens again, and never wanting to talk about it again because no one could possibly understand and no words could ever explain.
Empathy burnout or fatigue is something that may make its way into the DSM in the next edition. It's something paramedics, or Emergency ward doctors get. But it's also there in therapists and workers in aged care. In fact I'd say at some stage we've all experienced some form of empathy burnout and if you haven't this book will get you close to it. It's got to be one of the most confronting feelings for a human being, you're dealing with serious life-ending or life-changing trauma and you can't feel anything. The worst parts of other people's lives and you are dead emotionally.
With a book like this it's always going to be hard to critique. It's just so heavy and I feel so unworthy. However, we're here and this is what this site is for.
The first section ‘Time Heals All Wounds’ needs to be read by everyone. Published on its own it would be one of the best essays of the last decade. So I implore you to go to the bookstore or library and just read those first 44 pages. However, I also warn you, be prepared to be hit by a fully laden freight train.
The other sections are equally powerful but their power is not as explicit. People seem concerned over whether they're chapters, or essays. Whether this book is a novel or a long series of interviews. It doesn't have a recognisable form and that's the point. You can't take all of this topic material and force it into an existing form, it is by nature convoluted and messy. Form follows function.
The last section must have been hard for Tumarkin to include because though it's not right to compare trauma and measure out what is worse or more unbearable, her own diary style personal experiences just don't hit with the same weight as the other material. I've struggled with whether it was self-indulgent and narcissistic to re-centre the book on her own life and trauma at the end and I guess in many ways that's part of what she's examining but I didn't enjoy that part.
Sometimes I felt Tumarkin reached for quotes when her own thought processes didn't resolve and this seemed more of a crime from someone who can create her own beauty with the pen. Though I have to say nearly every quote is spot on. The reference to Harry Potter really dropped the ball though. Sure J.K. Rowling said she wouldn't let magic bring people back to life but then she copied the bible and did a whole resurrection scene. Which also reminds me there were many times I thought the chance to examine religious/spiritual teachings and approaches were almost deliberately passed over.
The one thing that is always present in these narratives, it surfaces again and again but never gets a full examination, is time. It seems that time is the only solace, the only salve to deep trauma. Not that "time heals all wounds" because Tumarkin explicitly confronts that and says the wounds don't heal, you come to live with them. More that time allows you to forget. Not in an active way but by cramming more life between you and the event eventually it fades. Somehow I don't think that's going to happen with this book.