I have recently read three very different books that can all be described as "life writing". One is an old-school "straight" biography, that tracks its subject from birth to death in a linear fashion; one is a memoir which is primarily focused on a particular formative experience / period in the writer's life; and the third is a combination social commentary / non-fiction told through the lens of the writer's relationship with her grandson and the sport he plays.
I don't often read life writing - I'm much more of a fiction person - so finishing three in July was a definite aberration for me (to be fair, I have been slowly picking away at the biography since February, but I did complete it this month). For that reason, I thought a comparative three-way review might be a good thing to do!
I enjoyed all three texts in entirely different ways, with one stand-out that I would describe as exceptional. Each gave me room for thought about what makes truly great life writing.
I think I've concluded that when life writing really lifts off, it's in the space of interpreting or reimagining a core truth or set of truths through the lens of things that have happened or are still happening within the writer's own life. I also think it succeeds best where it is limited in its focus - concentrating on a particular stage or time period, a particular interest or obsession, a particular relationship, a particular insight. We all contain multitudes, but, perhaps paradoxically, texts that try to cover the length and breadth of a life often come out feeling shallower and less weighty than the snapshot approach. Perhaps this is because every life is too rich and complex to easily be captured in one piece of writing, so the A to Z biographies often feel more like a catalogue of dates and events rather than a genuine window into as person.
The first of the three books I finished (although definitely not the first I started, as explained below) is Helen Garner's focused reflection / life writing book, The Season.
This book has been described as "a nanna's love letter to footy", which, while not inaccurate, is an incomplete read on what Garner does in this text. The framing of the book is Garner's decision to follow a season of her grandson Ambrose's local Australian Football League (AFL) team, attending most of the training sessions as well as most of the games. I, like Garner, am a Melburnian born and bred in an AFL-steeped culture, so I was interested to see what this extremely skilled writer would do with the theme.
Inevitably, there *is* a lot of footy in the book - both Amby's own team and the national league, especially following the fortunes of the Doggies (the Western Bulldogs, who are the western suburbs team that both Garner's family, based in Flemington in Melbourne's inner northwest, and my own in-law family, based also in the western suburbs but further south, passionately support). As someone who, somewhat heretically for where I live, does not follow the footy or really enjoy it, some of the passages about game mechanics and the progress of matches were lost on me, and I skimmed through them. (I did, however, greatly enjoy Garner's decision to write in not just Australian, but particularly western suburbs Melbourne, vernacular. This is the tongue of my people, and it's incredibly soothing to read a book where you are on the inside of the shades of meaning for once).
That said, this is only on the surface a book about footy. What Garner does through that framing is interrogate some of the larger questions that animate our lives - family relationships, ageing, masculinity (healthy and otherwise) and its relationship to femininity, the role of teaming in building community, sport / physical prowess and its many meanings, and the particular joys that can come from moving your body with intention through the physical world. The characters (real people, or at least based on real people - it's unclear how much poetic license Garner is taking) come through vividly and warmly - Amby especially, of course, but also his coach, Archie, his father (Garner's son-in-law), and his Colts team-mates and their families. The relationship that Garner paints between herself and Amby is incredibly warm and supportive, intergenerational wisdom-building at its finest. And Garner's awareness of her own ageing body, the clock running down on her own life, pierces the text through with a bittersweet melancholy that gives the whole project a weight that the casual language and frequent discussion of half-time oranges and knee injuries might otherwise suggest.
The book came to a conclusion that I was surprised to find myself very moved by (there was a tear in my eye). I am rarely moved emotionally by sporting triumphs, although I can and do recognise and admire skilful performance in the few sports that I actively watch (mostly gymnastics and tennis, although, raised in a cricketing household, I've also been known to watch the summer test matches with enthusiasm). I think Garner's achievement in this book is not the elevation of footy to a spiritual plane, although there are a few purple prose sections where this seems to be the ambition. Rather, it is the celebration of family, culture, community; the joy in strength, skill, teaming; and the achingly lovely panegyric to boys who are about to become men, with all the positive things that can entail. I thoroughly enjoyed it and give it 8/10 (would have been higher except for the footy-heavy bits :-P
Wilkins' biography of Terry Pratchett is a text I had long intended to check out, and finally bought myself a copy at the beginning of this year. It has taken me six months to get through it - as is my wont with "straight" biographies, I dipped in and out, reading lots of fiction in between the odd chapter or two of this one.
I wanted to read it because I am a Discworld fan; Pratchett's work has been the source of comfort, entertainment and insight for me since I first came across it as a 17 year old university student, and I had a feeling his life (especially its sadly premature end) might be interesting.
My feeling wasn't wrong, exactly; Pratchett's story certainly had some intriguing byways and highways, and Wilkins, as his long-time personal assistant, is certainly the one best placed to tell it. Wilkins is also a more than competent writer, and the text has moments of Pratchett-esque wryness and humour that were enjoyable to read.
That said - this is a very straightforward A to Z biography. From Pratchett's birth to his difficult decline and early death, Wilkins narrates events, milestones and actions in a relatively unreflective way. The events themselves are sometimes interesting in the way that little points of trivia about a famous person are interesting - for instance, I did not know before reading it that Pratchett worked as a press officer for the South West Region of the Central Electricity Generating Board for nine years, in an area with three nuclear reactors. Some of the anecdotes from that period of his life were genuinely entertaining.
Overall, while I enjoyed it, found the end moving, and am glad to own a copy, this didn't hit for me emotionally in the way that the two focused memoirs did. Oddly, I don't feel like I got to know Pratchett as a person as much from it as I do from the Discworld books, despite it covering the whole of his life. Perhaps that's the difference between writing about someone else vs writing your own life. 7/10 for me.
Hannah Kent's debut novel, Burial Rites, is, in my opinion (but not just mine!) one of the best novels by an Australian writer published this century. I'd definitely put it top five, and maybe even top two (Sea Hearts, Margo Lanagan's selkie retelling, is my number one forever, but Burial Rites comes very, very close).
Burial Rites is Kent's creative retelling of the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman executed in Iceland (in 1829). Lyrical, hypnotic, uncompromising and brilliant, that novel took my breath away, not least because of the deep sense of Icelandic lore and place and culture that breathed through it.
Always Home, Always Homesick serves as, in a way, the backstory of Burial Rites. It is Kent's memoir of her enduring love affair and bond with Iceland, forged in her year as a 17-year-old exchange student in the northern part of the country and nurtured ever since with frequent returns and her close relationship with her Icelandic "family". It describes how Kent first heard the story of Agnes, became engrossed with it, and came to choose it as her thesis subject and novel inspiration. It details her research process, with all its twists and turns, and the writing process that energised her.
While the book is about Kent - as a creative, as writer, as a person, as a daughter and a wife and a mother - it is also, profoundly, a book about Iceland and its rich vein of stories, myths, and culture. The writing is so beautiful and evocative that it transported me - great writing does that, where I feel I can smell and taste and hear and see everything. Iceland is a country I have always wanted to visit (and have hopes of going in 2029, our planned big European trip) and Kent's words helped me feel like I was there already, in the best possible way.
Like Garner's book, this one succeeded so brilliantly for me because it was a focused memoir. It used Kent's relationship with Iceland not just as the narrative engine but the emotional centre, and by so doing, it was able to formulate and communicate some very profound and resonant truths. I listened to it as an audiobook narrated by Kent herself, which was, I believe, the best way to do it - as an Icelandic speaker, she pronounces words and names with correct inflection, while still reading the English in her (to me as an Australian) comfortably familiar South Australian accent.
In summary: I completely loved it and would urge all fans of Burial Rites, Iceland, or lyrical texts to give it a go, even if you don't usually vibe with life writing. This is as good as it gets! 9.5/10 for me.
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