Books Roundup

Late Bloomer
Clem Bastow (Hardie Grant and Bolinda Audio, available now)

Late Bloomer is our First Book Club pick for August—join Ellen Cregan and Clem Bastow for a free online conversation event in partnership with Yarra Libraries on Tuesday 10 August!

Ever wondered what it is like to be diagnosed Autistic? Or have you ever thought you could be Autistic but you do not know how and where to begin? Cultural critic and Autism advocate Clem Bastow has done the research for the curious reader, the undiagnosed and the newly diagnosed.

Bastow explains Autism in layman’s terms, while adding examples of her own lived experiences. The author, a fangirl of pop culture, intersperses the book with references to her favourite things, such as dinosaurs, movies, cosplaying and fan fiction. I loved the nostalgic pop-culture references.

Late Bloomer should be a conversation starter, one that can open up empathy and support for those with late-diagnosis Autism.

Moving backwards in time, we are given a glimpse of how Clem grew up with supportive parents and the privileges of a white, suburban upbringing. Her life and career is deeply imbedded in the arts: music criticism, performance, script writing, broadcasting and public speaking. She established herself as an entertainment journalist, working overseas. Her Autism diagnosis came later, in her thirties. Clem has mixed feelings about the diagnosis, stating:

To discover, or to be reassured, that you are Autistic when you are well into adulthood, is to be pitched headfirst into paradoxical thinking. In one breath, I longed for the interventions and therapies that I missed, while in the other I wished for all Autistic children to allowed to simply be.

As someone who also received a late diagnosis, I know it can be a difficult path, fraught with challenges for medical access and stigma. The tensions between diagnosis, reflection and self-acceptance can be found in this book. There are words in this memoir that belong to a list of ableist words (words like ‘idiocy’ and ‘crippling’). However, ultimately, Late Bloomer is about acceptance and celebration.

The humour of Late Bloomer is accentuated by the typesetting. Bastow has used capitalised letters, exclamation points and indented paragraphs with smaller, italicised fonts to create more emphasis for Autistic readers like me. I found that the audiobook by Bolinda, narrated by the author, gave the words even more context.

Despite being a memoir, Bastow had added a brilliant section at the end of the book about the experiences of others who are also #ActuallyAutistic. It isn’t clear how these perspectives were sourced or if there is any diversity in representation among the interviewees, highlighting the need for more variety of perspectives on Autism in publishing. As Bastow notes: ‘In Melbourne, for example, you can count on one hand the number of clinics adept at diagnosing Autism in girls and women … Race and class also contribute to vast disparities in diagnosis.’

Late Bloomer should be a conversation starter, one that can open up empathy and support for those with late-diagnosis Autism. There are many more #OwnVoices just waiting to be heard.

— CB Mako

Muddy People
Sara El Sayed (Black Inc., available now)

In Muddy People, Sara El Sayed’s debut memoir, we are plunged into Sayed’s present without a moment to spare. The author, a twenty-six-year-old writer and academic, neatly positions herself in the first few pages with markers of geography, appearance, race, religion and family. These markers begin to unravel early on in the text—and we, along with our narrator, are left questioning when and why the outlines get ‘a little muddy’, with no beginning and no end.

We are introduced to Sayed’s parents in the frame hanging in their first home in Alexandria, exactly as they left it. Through chapters alternating between ‘Mama’ and ‘Baba’, Sayed offers portraits of these migrants from Egypt, now living in Australia. These works-in-progress, coming along and coming apart, are seen as fallible but well-intentioned. She writes, ‘My father might say the sky is blue and my mother will say take an umbrella. The stories we tell don’t always match up.’ These depictions reveal just as much about Sayed as they do her parents.

Muddy People is a testament to the uniqueness of our diverse hyphenated experiences as Arab Australians.

The book is also framed by ‘The Rules’: ‘Don’t touch alcohol’, ‘Always tell the truth’, ‘Cover your eyes’ and ‘It is haram to waste food.’ Slowly and surely, Sayed realises the rules, unapologetic and often contradictory, have shaped her. This gospel that the family has inherited unquestionably, for better or worse, propels them through their most difficult moments. However, one way or another, the rules are stretched in all aspects of Sayed’s life.

Sayed’s prose is both instant and accessible. Many chapters offer satirical musings on racism and whiteness, as well as nuanced commentary on where ‘Arab Muslim’ and ‘Australian’ meet. True to her strong voice and witty writing, Sayed depicts the ways her gender is fetishised and exploited, and her culture ridiculed, diminished, and demonised, while also being used by others to prove their virtue (she writes that she is their racial ‘hall pass’). In all instances, these experiences are marked by the inability of those interacting with Sayed to appreciate her fullness as a messy human being who has dreams and aspirations and needs of her own.

Though I saw myself and my heritage reflected in this novel (which may be the expectation as a fellow Arab Muslim of Egyptian background), I equally failed to see myself in a lot of it—a testament to the uniqueness of our diverse hyphenated experiences as Arab Australians.

On an important personal note, it is worth mentioning that Sayed explains in the acknowledgments that she will donate all profits from her debut memoir to support the struggle for justice for Palestine. It is a brave decision, full of integrity, from someone who could be focusing on celebrating their first book, a significant and joyful achievement, but is instead using this to draw attention to the systemic shutting out of Palestinian voices—something her publisher has been accused of doing. This is why, despite my own personal boycotting of Schwartz Media, I decided to review Muddy People, in solidarity with Sayed—Arab to fellow Arab, writer to writer, because our celebrations and our struggles are one.

— Sara M. Saleh

Dark as Last Night
Tony Birch (UQP, available now)

Tony Birch’s latest collection of short stories, Dark as Last Night, offers sixteen mesmerising vignettes on the human condition. Though narratively separate, the stories beg the questions: How are we remembered? How have we lived? As one character says in the story ‘Bicycle Thieves’, ‘There’s nothing wrong with losing. It’s how you lose.’

The collection paints a visceral picture of past and present, speaking to the archival nature of art, particularly fiction. Each short story serves the dual function of storytelling and the preservation of a history. Birch immortalises culture, time, space and place in stories such as ‘Starman’, which exists as an ode to the 70s glam rock movement, and in ‘Riding Trains With Thelma Plum’, which rounds into commentary on the contemporary where ‘the revolution is just a T-Shirt away.’

This collection sings with poetic brevity. Birch writes with enthralling crisp prose, each short story dancing in the mind akin to a flashback.

Each story feels like it could have been scooped from the nostalgic reflections of a close friend and are told with the same intimacy and empathy. In his trademark fashion, Birch hones our eyes on the seemingly banal interactions of day-to-day life that ultimately reveal the deeper nuance of relationships. In ‘The Death of Michael McGuire’, he unpacks strained neighbourhood ties, exploring the intricacies of questionable moral character and crime. The narrator, Frank, reveals his disapproval for neighbour Michael McGuire’s clandestine past as a street runner, gambler and notorious womaniser. Veiled in a layer of understanding at how survival comes in myriad forms and at great cost: ‘My own dad, who’d never exactly been father of the year, gave me little advice in life except, Keep your head down and Women and the punt, both can end you.’

As in Birch’s most recent novel The White Girl, some stories explore colonial violence. In the eponymous ‘Dark as Last Night’ we see a child’s perspective on patriarchal abuse. A harrowing story, she endeavours to escape a ‘demented Olympian who practised the discus and shot-put with a full roast dinner.’ In ‘Bobby Moses’, Birch describes a man returning to his country. He encounters a policeman along the way, an interaction that historically ends in cruel mistreatment. In this story, the perspective bounces back and forth between Bobby Moses and the officer. Their experience is shared but seen from two opposing sides of a power dynamic. The officer offers reluctant assistance to this wandering stranger, out of place on the outskirts of a now white town. Moses is aware of his need to present compliance in order to avoid danger, while welcoming the possibility of mutual benefit: ‘Bobby knew the copper was in a hurry for him to move on, but he wasn’t about to…The offer of an air conditioned ride in a police car was tempting.’ What happens next serves as a reflection on reconciliation and how the individual operates within the larger colonial system.

Piece by piece, this collection sings with poetic brevity, giving enough to tantalise a desire for more and yet satiate in the fullness of a micro-tale. Birch writes with enthralling crisp prose, each short story dancing in the mind akin to a flashback. Dark as Last Light reminds us how pain, love, sacrifice, grief, violence and joy are ubiquitous. The scale of any emotion does not correlate with its impact. Big or small, beauty can be found all around us.

— Thabani Tshuma 

When Things are Alive They Hum
Hannah Bent (Ultimo Press, available now)

Sisters, in my experience, are full of implicit understanding, invisible shadows and secrets. When Things are Alive They Hum follows the story of two, Harper and Marlowe, as they navigate the complexities of their relationship.

The story begins when Harper’s congenital heart condition accelerates and she asks Marlowe to return from her studies in London to their childhood home in Hong Kong. Marlowe acquiesces, having always held a strong sense of responsibility for Harper, who has Down syndrome. When Harper is denied treatment for her condition, Marlowe decides on a course of action to save her, though as readers we question who it is that requires rescue. And it is here that Hannah Bent does what many writers do not, presenting a bulk of the narrative in the first-person of someone with a disability.

This is a thoughtful, kind-hearted book. While the words themselves are a joy to the senses, it is in the unspoken that I feel delight.

As I huddle by the fire with Melbourne’s winter beating down outside and the echo of my own sister with Down syndrome ringing in my ears, I ride the subtle tide of this sibling song, peppered by a reciprocal and familiar desire to do what is best for the other. Brittle undertones of grief and the risk to dignity are handled delicately. Harper’s autonomy is precarious, but treasured: ‘I would like to let you know that I am happy for you to fix my heart … but I will not be needing a new heart and lungs because I like my own.’

Sarah Kanake, author of Sing Fox to Me, another tale of a sibling with Down syndrome, writes of the importance of the first-person voice of people with Down syndrome being represented in literature ‘as they are rarely allowed to actually tell their story.’ In response, I flick between two modes of thought: the resonance and absolute yes I feel regarding hearing this voice, and a thin line of discomfort as I question our place, as siblings, to do this. This unease is reflected in Bent’s text when Harper says: ‘Why does she get to speak and be listened to, but I don’t? They are always talking about me, but I am never included.’

Annie Dillard asks, ‘Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? And, Can I do it?’ And in the absence of the person with Down syndrome writing the story themselves—and my support of #OwnVoices representations in books (and indeed, in life) should not be underestimated—surely the next most trusted option would be the sibling, someone who has lived alongside their kin for most, if not all, of their lives. As Marlowe states, ‘Blood oozed from her puncture wounds and I felt the veins in my own body shudder.’ Despite my concerns, by the end of the book, I’m pleased to have encountered the first-person narrative of Harper.

When Things are Alive They Hum is a thoughtful, kind-hearted book. While the words themselves are a joy to the senses, full of colour and scent, it is in the unspoken that I feel delight. Bent’s Harper says ‘take that’ to anyone who ever thought that someone with Down syndrome couldn’t be of absolute value in a family, a community, a life.

— Lucinda Bain