“When there is an invisible elephant in the room, one is from time to time bound to trip over a trunk.”

It is a plane, not a plan. Hobart, February 2021.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

I had no idea of this book before reading it, so the 'big reveal' about a quarter of the way through caught me by surprise just as the author had intended! Thank goodness, too, as I struggled with the slow drift of the pacing and the bone dry wit of the narrator's voice to that point.

However, once the key to the story was provided, I found the rest of the story engaging and absorbing. While reading about a cast of damaged people who have chosen to repress rather than address their trauma can be tiresome, I was so drawn into the story in an empathetic fashion, and the dryness of the narrative voice became much more alive.

There's not a huge lot of resolution to be found, but the questions that it asks on parenting, ideology and the rights of all creatures on planet Earth are worthy and profound. The 'trick' pulled by the author, when coupled with the complex weaving of the narrative arc, served as an interesting and affecting exploration of the nature of memory.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

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In dreams begin responsibilities.

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This will hurt me...

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