Books Roundup

The Mother Wound
Amani Haydar (PanMacmillan, available now)

The Mother Wound is our First Book Club pick for July—stay tuned to the KYD website and Podcast for more throughout the month.

The Mother Wound begins in a hospital room, where Amani Haydar is giving birth to her first child. Following the birth, a nurse asks where Amani’s mother is. This seemingly innocent question has a tragic answer. Amani’s mother Salwa had been murdered by her husband—Amani’s father—four months prior. Amani says to the nurse: ‘I am so happy to have a daughter, I am from a family of strong women.’ This book is a blend of deeply personal memoir and a study into violence and trauma, but it is also a testament to women who raise families and support communities in terrifying circumstances.

Salwa had come to Australia as a shy teenage bride. Despite her husband’s constant belittling, she had grown to be a confident and passionate advocate for women in her community, and was training to be a counsellor before her life was so cruelly ended. As Amani writes, her mother had all of the skills to recognise the red flags of an abusive relationship but ‘there was nothing the law could do to challenge Mum’s belief that it was her job to continue holding the family together no matter the risk.’  As the case against Amani’s father moves through the courts, his side of the family turn on Amani and her sisters, accusing them of being bad daughters who cause trouble and do not support their father. They claim that Salwa must have done something to deserve her death. The blatant patriarchy and misogyny that created the circumstances of their mother’s murder drags on, compounding the trauma.

The Mother Wound encompasses so many difficult themes, and does so with power and grace.

Years before her mother’s murder, Amani’s family suffered another great tragedy. Her grandmother Layla was killed by an Israeli drone strike as she fled her war-torn village in a van flying a white flag. Layla’s death was labelled a suspected war crime, and Salwa worked hard to hold her mother’s state-sanctioned killers to account. As Amani researches her grandmother’s death for her book, she comes across a television interview given by Salwa, and reflects on the similarities: ‘Listening to the interview as an adult, I encounter Mum in a similar phase of her life as I am now, telling a similar story.’ The repetition here is chilling—the violent death of a mother, and the determined activism of a daughter. But the strength of these bereaved women is remarkable.

The Mother Wound encompasses so many difficult themes, and does so with power and grace. Amani writes that ‘between the screeches of Islamophobes and the booming voice of patriarchy within our own community, there is little room left for Muslim women to share their truths freely.’ This may be a difficult read for some, but it is vital that we read stories like Amani’s, Salwa’s and Layla’s.

— Ellen Cregan

House of Kwa
Mimi Kwa (Harper Collins Australia, available now)

When I began reading journalist Mimi Kwa’s debut House of Kwa, I believed I was opening up a memoir. However, I was briefly disoriented to find myself in late nineteenth-century China surrounded by adolescent brides balanced on bound feet, everything blurred by a shroud of opium smoke:

Cooks are cooking, rickshaw drivers are resting, children are finishing homework since private tutors have made tracks for the night. A nursemaid breastfeeds a baby—not hers, of course—and two concubines wash before bed in preparation for the possibility of a late visit from Great-Grandfather.

Departing from the moment her paternal grandfather chooses to leave the security and comfort of the family compound in Beijing, Kwa embarks on a winding journey through southern China to Hong Kong, rendering the anecdotes of her ancestors in vibrant technicolour. In the chapters that tell the story of the birth and early life of her father Francis—as well as his sister Theresa, the aunty ‘no one forgets’—Kwa’s gaze is trained on the quotidian and exhibits a deep empathy for both her family and the people of Hong Kong. Kwa describes the changes that will weigh on Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation of the then-British colony:

Gazes will be lowered. Shoulders hunched. Ordinary native Hong Kong people will be given ration cards and risk life and limb to bring even the most meagre amount of food to the family table. Commerce and industry will grind almost to a halt. Schools will shut. Children will have nowhere to play.

Kwa’s decision to reach four generations into her family’s past reflects the centrality of family in Chinese culture, but more than this, it lends complexity to Francis’s later actions and behaviour as a father. Kwa’s own childhood in the suburbs of Perth is troubled by racism, sexual predation, her mother’s severe mental illness and her father’s ‘eccentricities’. Yet—as in her carefully researched reconstruction of her father’s life—Kwa manages to avoid crossing over into melodrama by dedicating equal attention to the privileges and moments of respite that buoy a life.

Traversing the boundaries of a traditional memoir, House of Kwa explores the way our lives are shaped by the past we can and cannot remember.

House of Kwa answers the question of how one should write about one’s family with generosity and love—to read it is to experience Kwa’s wonder at the strength and resilience of her family, as well as the intimacy of her relationships with them. Traversing the boundaries of a traditional memoir, House of Kwa is the biography of a family that explores the way our lives are shaped by the past we can and cannot remember.

—Megan Cheong

She is Haunted
Paige Clark (Allen & Unwin, available now)

In her short story collection She is Haunted, debut author Paige Clark opens the eponymous piece with an epigraph explaining quantum mechanics: ‘All possible outcomes happen, each inhabiting its own separate universe.’ These words are integral to understanding the collection, which pivots on the idea of interlaced realities.

Each of the eighteen stories takes place in their own self-contained worlds, but they all converge around themes of identity and complex relationships. Characters across seemingly disparate pieces share similar names, suggesting that all the narratives are in communication with each other. Elizabeth of ‘Safety Triangle’ grapples with a positive pregnancy test and a stale relationship. Meanwhile, Eliza Loo of ‘Amygdala’ recovers from a life-altering surgery and recalls the ardent love she shares with her partner. Teenager Elisabeth P Loo of ‘Cracks’ burns her mother’s menthol cigarettes to prevent her from smoking them. In ‘Conversations with my Brother About Trees’, Ellie moves her mother into a leafy retirement village. These echoes and overlaps create an intriguing puzzle of connections and coincidences.

These stories reimagine the mother-daughter divide as two sides of one coin, illuminating how these roles can overlap in eerie ways.

At the core of Clark’s collection is the intricacy of mother-daughter relationships. In the propulsive opening piece ‘Elisabeth Kübler Ross’, a woman on the cusp of motherhood bargains with God and must choose between her mother and her unborn child. The pregnant narrator of ‘Safety Triangle’ asks, ‘How can I be a mother when I don’t know how to be a daughter?’ The story ‘She is Haunted’ is cleaved in two—a dead daughter haunts her mother in the first part, while the second section depicts another reality in which their situations are reversed. These stories reimagine the mother-daughter divide as two sides of one coin, illuminating how these roles can overlap in eerie ways.

Clark is Chinese/American/Australian, and within all of her stories are aspects of transnational identity. Her settings bounce from Melbourne to Los Angeles to New York. It is in this third setting that ‘A Room of Chinese Women’ takes place, an understated but powerful story that speaks directly to our time. Two Chinese women wander through New York, where the trains are empty of businessmen and people are wearing masks. The characters encounter a Sichuan restaurant defaced with racist graffiti and a waitress with an acid burn. The piece is underpinned by a muted anxiety around the anti-Asian racism that has taken over the world due to COVID-19:

‘Do you get scared sometimes?’ the woman asks.

‘I do, sometimes,’ I said. ‘A lot of the time.’

Though never directly explicated, the unspoken threat of violence pervades the piece, and Clark reminds us of the importance of empathy and community.

From ghosts to budding life, Clark digs down to our vulnerable cores in a collection haunted by echoes and a longing for connection. She is Haunted invites us to probe the malleable bounds of our reality and unveils universes that are ripe with possibilities.

—Annie Zhang

The Newcomer
Laura Elizabeth Woollett (Scribe, available now)

Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s latest novel, The Newcomer, is absolutely searing. A crime thriller set on the fictional Fairfolk Island, the story explores the life and death of twenty-nine-year-old wildchild Paulina. When she is murdered, every man on the island is a suspect.

As in her previous novel Beautiful Revolutionary, which told the story of Kool-Aid cult leader Jim Jones and his People’s Temple, Woollett is inspired by a true story. The Newcomer is based on the murder of Sydneysider Janelle Patton on Norkfolk Island in 2002. It is no mean feat to research a brutal crime that occurred on an island where everyone knows each other and is still an open wound. I can attest to this after recently researching the Port Arthur massacre, speaking to those who knew the killer and the victims. Woollett’s extensive knowledge of Norfolk Island is meticulously researched. She even went so far as to make up a language that the locals speak on Fairfolk Island—Fayrf’k, based off the language that is spoken on Norfolk Island—Norf’k. The author’s choice to create the fictional Fairfolk Island allows her to tread lightly on a true crime but dive deeply into the subject matter.

This crime novel sets itself apart with its exploration of the victim and those who loved her. Woollett is challenging the way female victims of violent crimes are portrayed.

This crime novel sets itself apart from its typical counterparts in the genre with its exploration of the victim and those who loved her. Woollett is challenging the way female victims of violent crimes are portrayed. We witness Paulina in the years leading up to her brutal murder, seeing her as a fully-formed person. Paulina has many demons—addiction, eating disorders, self-harm and bad men—all explored honestly on the page. But I could also picture her as someone I’d be drinking buddies with. She exudes a cutting warmth. The character is fun and in your face. Her humour rendered her 3D in my mind. A standout scene is Paulina talking on the phone to her mother after meeting a new man:

‘You know those abs when they’re shaped like a V? Those abs that go down in a V-shape and it’s like a sign saying “my dick’s right here”? He has those.’

‘Well good for you. I don’t think abs are relevant to my grandchildren, though.’

‘They’re relevant to me making your grandchildren!’ Paulina giggled.

The Newcomer is more than just a simple crime thriller—it’s a force. The life that jumps off from the page and into my mind’s eye felt very real. The author’s exploration of the changing nature of grief was exquisite. We see the effects of the murder in all its ripples, from the earliest moments, through weeks, months and years. Grief is ever evolving, changing its weight on your shoulders from day to day, and Woollett nailed it perfectly. The Newcomer is sure to finally establish Woollett as one of Australia’s finest fiction authors.

—Claire Sullivan