An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken

A writer of fiction, Elizabeth McCracken found herself in France in an old house in the country, pregnant. She and her husband like to visit different places when not required to be home. Thus the French country. The two of them arranged for a midwife and had access to a hospital about 40 minutes away. All checkups went well, until the last one, when there appeared to be something amiss.

The baby was stillborn.

This book is the story of that baby, the months before and after, the way Elizabeth and her husband coped with the loss. It is written simply and freely, from the heart. Yet, although she says she did very little editing, she seemed to have a sense of how to tell the story. We know from the start that the baby dies, but we know no more about it until well into the story.

What we learn goes beyond the grief. We learn how a tragedy can be associated with a place to such an extent that the place is forever ruined. We learn that it is important to say something to the grieving parents, not to ignore the grief.

We learned, in this case, that McCracken does not want to forget the happy days, months, before the birth, even though she never wants to see those places again. It's important to remember.

McCracken wrote the book, she says, so that she does not have to keep telling the story, so that she does not have to answer the question, "Is this your first child?" It hurts to keep explaining, "No, the first was stillborn". Better that acquaintances already know.

A simply-written memoir that manages to sidestep the maudlin yet lets us in on the fullness of a mother's pain. 

The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway

This is a remarkable little book. And "little" it really isn't. I started reading it thinking I'd just get it out of the way and maybe learn a little on the way. But it really captivated me and I learned a great deal more than I expected.

Years ago I read The Fatal Shore, about the founding of Australia. For years I carried around the unfair assessment of Australia that a colony founded with prisoners and cruel prison wardens, a country where the native population was wiped out and the British rule prevailed, was not a country I liked. It's funny, considering the parallels to my own country.

Over time, though, I got over it. It's another country with its own identity, secrets, wonders. Perhaps this memoir would give me a different perspective.

Jill begins life in the bush. She is born in 1934 in the back country of Australia to an ambitious and hard-working family, with two older brothers, a determined father, and a hard-working, intensely capable mother. Her mother oversees the running of the house on the sheep ranch, keeping everything shining and running and developing a thriving garden, full of vegetables and beautiful flowers.

Initially the sheep ranch is successful and improvements are gradually made. Jill becomes a hardworking child who likes working on the vast ranch with her father and his workers. Having been born on the ranch she does not realize how the ranch, the open spaces, the incredible quiet were unique in Australia. She accepts the requirement that she not cry, that she be stoic in the face of adversity. At the same time she is well aware that she is loved by both parents and valued fully. At this point I thought, "a functional family!" Yes, difficult times, hard times, but love and caring and support.

But then times change. A drought takes over the land, throwing the family and all other similar families into turmoil, distress, near-ruin. Sheep die and the smell of rotting bodies takes over Jill's memories of the land. In time she is more than ready to leave Coorain, the ranch. A terrible incident leads to the family moving to Sydney to ride it out.

Once settled in a small house in Sydney, Jill is sent to a private school that emphasises academics yet also accepts many children formerly from the bush. Quiet and reserved, she has a hard time initially fitting in but eventually her hard work and determination win her a solid place and a chance for a university education.

Jill enters the University of Sydney. She has always excelled at working hard and in spite of some setbacks continues to do so here. She becomes a true academic, a scholar in the history of Australia.

It is during her time here that Jill starts to make connections in her life. She starts to see a wider world and puts things in place that had not occurred to her before. She recognizes the second-place status women held at the time and for the first time sees the role aborigines have been forced to play for so long. She breaks away from her lifelong worldview - that of a colonial beholden to Britain. She has been raised to speak and behave more as a British citizen than an Australian. As she discovers more about her land, its citizens, and writers both Australian and not, Jill realizes that her beloved land is rarely recognized in its own right, for itself.

In addition to realizing where Australia fits in the world, Jill explores the role of women and other disenfranchised persons. She rises in the academic world, but constantly feels a pull from her mother. Her mother, the capable, strong, personable woman who handled everything in the bush, had become increasingly dependent on her daughter and less capable of caring for herself. Jill, for her part, felt suffocated and incapable of continuing to live with her mother.

The book is in large part an exploration of the relationship between the two. It is so much more, ultimately, yet this relationship is at the heart of it.

I found it a fascinating, deep, emotional account that explores one life but also the life of a country I did not know much about at all.

Circling My Mother, by Mary Gordon

As promised, Mary Gordon "circles" her mother in this curious memoir. She grabs memories from others along with her own, and tries to piece together how others saw her mother, to get at a more complete picture. At the end, she says she doesn't want to forget her mother, and it's apparent that writing about her helps her remember. But it isn't just memories that color the story. We learn of her mother's, Anna's, early years, when she contracted polio at the age of three, how she lived with her sisters, how she supported her family for years, years for which she never was given thanks. We hear about her unusual marriage to a literary man some years older, who never manages to make money at any of the many schemes he tries. And we hear of the surprise birth of little Mary, Anna's only child, almost a miracle. Mary remembers growing up with her afflicted mother, wondering how her parents got married. They fought every day but apparently made up at night. She remembers the beauty of her mother's face, complexion, hair, and doesn't forget the awkwardness of her gait, with her damaged leg, eventually encased in a brace. A part of this memoir that I found particularly interesting was Anna's religion. She was Roman Catholic to the max, a max I honestly did not realize existed (my ignorance). Not only did she adhere to Catholic tenets, but she also chose her friends and even film stars, based on their religion. This in spite of the fact that her husband was Jewish and the two did not easily combine their faiths but rather ridiculed each other. For several years Anna actually took time out to spend with a favorite priest. She, and other older women, would take a "vacation" to be near this priest, to listen to him, spend time in his environment as he moved to different locations. This relationship was an odd one, as the priest was falling continually downward in his work, not easily accepted by most churchgoers, yet these women were entranced with his view of the world. While Anna was held back by her affliction, Mary suggests that maybe this was actually what she wanted - to be happy in her clerical work and confined to a limited world. Her polio gave her what she may have really wanted. IN the end, Mary tries to connect the earlier almost glamorous mother with the ill, dying, demented, alcoholic one, relying even on the smell of her favorite perfume. She struggles at this point in the book in a way that she doesn't seem to elsewhere. It is a time of confession and exposure and she is uncomfortable with it, yet feels it is necessary. I found it a fascinating look at not just the woman and the family but also at the time: depression, war, post-war euphoria, religion. As well as the tidbits about genealogy, where Anna came from and how she hung onto it.

Possible Side Effects, by Augusten Burroughs

Burroughs reads his own book in this CD edition.

I think listening to the author affects my perception of the work, and that perception is not, perhaps, as good as it might otherwise be.

Burroughs is an experienced reader, yet his technique is odd. His phrasing is out of sync with the meaning of the sentences, as he breaks where one would not normally break, emphasizes words probably not emphasized in speech. It is as if he is reading someone else's work, and for the first time.

The other book of his that I listened to was Wolf at the Table, and there is a significant difference between the two, both in the way the stories are told and in the way they are read. Wolf is the unadorned truth. No humor in it at all. It is the story of Burroughs' relationship with his father, who was a man who liked to play games with his son's head and who had little regard for the feelings or sensitivities of others. His father was a monster, and that book makes that very clear.

By contrast, Possible Side Effects is a series of stories of Burroughs' life, taken out of sequence and at times embellished as needed for comedic effect. There certainly is overlap, as they are both based on his own memories, but Side Effects is humor, even though at times a bit edgy humor.

Burroughs' reading of Wolf at the Table is unrelentingly somber, dark, and so meticulously spoken that it is as if Burroughs cannot let go of a single word without clinging to it first. I found his reading hard to take. His reading of Side Effects is lighter, even though it clearly comes from the same place. It is easier to take because he does not seem to dwell on words the same way, doesn't stretch them out until they nearly spring back. Yet the phrasing is similar, the stopping in odd places, the overall almost flat tone. In both cases he takes on the voices of other characters at times and his speech patterns and accents are very much alike in these cases, in the two books. It struck me, though, that in the case of Side Effects he does not actually speak the way these characters would have. It's disconcerting.

The stories range from all-out funny to near-yucky to creepy, frankly, and reveal inner torments underneath the humor. In these stories Burroughs talks frankly about his own physical ailments as well as mental aberrations. The stories tend to be about excess, about going too far. The times Burroughs strikes out against his parents or grandparents he does so in ways we associate with out of control juveniles. He throws the worst epithets at his hated grandmother. He single-handedly covers his childhood kitchen in flour, pots, pans, butter, meat from the freezer, and heaven knows what else. The very excess of it all is perhaps what makes it funny - as well as edgy. And it makes us wonder what it's like to be inside that head. Maybe that's why I keep coming back for more.