Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Heather Rose, Allen & Unwin, $32.99.
Award-winning Australian author tells an exceptional life story. This is a memoir of loss and discovery delivered in essays, forming a chronological narrative of personal growth appraised from different angles.
Heather Rose – author of Bruny and The Museum of Modern Love – writes a profoundly personal collection filled with reflections on love, death, creativity and healing.
“I could write a memoir about travelling the writing life, or my love of baking cakes. But I’m still that girl under the tree who wants to get to the big conversation to the heart of things. So here are some stories about life and death. About experiences that have no easy explanation but which happened, nevertheless. Life is a process of forgiveness for the choices we make in order to be ourselves.”
Heather wants to get to the big conversation, to the heart of things. The unknown, that 95 per cent.
It’s the exploration of life through four lenses: Heather’s relationship with nature, wild spiritual adventures, the bonds of family and the lessons of pain. This is a remarkable insight into the inner life of the author, a biography that’s part divine awakening, part travelogue. More than just a series of cogitations on chronic pain and predictive imaginings, this book is a contemplative path towards affirmation.
Rose says: “Readers often remark how different each of my books are and over the years each novel seems to have collected its own fans. If people loved The River Wife, The Butterfly Man, White Heart, The Museum of Modern Love or Bruny they’ll find in the memoir threads of all these stories, themes, settings and even characters. They’ll also discover what it took to become a writer and an explorer of the deeper mysteries.”
