Australian – Dementia Fiction

“This Excellent Machine” by Stephen Orr

This Excellent Machine is the first volume in an anticipated trilogy of childhood novels by Australian writer, Stephen Orr. Set in a single neighbourhood of a small Australian town in 1984 it is narrated by seventeen year old Clem who lives with his mother, his sister, Jen and his Pop, Doug. Pop has been a surrogate father to Clem since his own dad disappeared when he was a small child. Clem is incredibly close to his grandfather. They fix up cars together in the drive and have been plotting for some time to take off on a road trip, using an old treasure map to track down a seam of gold. As the novel begins, the family are just beginning to realise the implications of Pop’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Whilst Dementia isn’t the primary focus of the novel -it’s more a coming of age kind of piece- Pop’s illness is a theme consistently revisited throughout the novel and shown to impact Clem’s life in significant ways.

There were several thing I really appreciated about Orr’s depiction of Alzheimer’s in This Excellent Machine. Primarily I liked the way Pop’s confusion and deterioration is explored within a community context. He goes out of his way to make the point that, at this time, Australians living at this socio-economic level, rarely considered external care provision. Pop’s Alzheimer’s is managed within the family but it is also heartening to see neighbours and members of the local community taking responsibility for the older man. They look out for him when he wanders off. Two of them agree to accompany Clem and Pop on their road trip. They even encourage him to continue tinkering with cars as a means of retaining his sense of self and ongoing purpose. I appreciated the idea of community support which Orr is exploring. Having grown up in a small, rural community, in the eighties, it’s something I recognised immediately.

I also liked the way Orr gives Doug a certain amount of autonomy. Doug might have Dementia but his family and the community around him still look to him to contribute to decision making processes. They respect his opinion and look up to him. At one point in the novel Doug attempts to help a young delinquent get back on the straight and narrow and we are given a glimpse of the way people living with Dementia can continue to contribute meaningfully to society.

This Excellent Machine is far from being a utopian portrayal of living well with Alzheimer’s. Orr doesn’t shy away from exploring the more difficult aspects of the illness. Doug’s daughter is often frustrated by her father’s condition and their relationship is under strain throughout the novel. Clem finds it hard to watch the man who has been like a father to him, decline and lose interest in the world around him. Orr also includes a heartbreaking scene where Doug gets to be a participant on the TV quiz show, Wheel of Fortune and becomes confused and frustrated while it’s being recorded. All this to say, I found This Excellent Machine to be an accurate and balanced portrayal of an older working class man experiencing the early stages of Alzheimer’s. It manages to hold the balance between honesty and hope throughout.

This Excellent Machine was published by Wakefield Press in 2019

“Rain Birds” by Harriet McKnight

Australian writer, Harriet McKnight’s debut novel, Rain Birds is set in rural Australia, on the edge of the wild and beautiful Murrungowar National Park. McKnight has a wonderful ability to capture the natural world in her writing and I particularly enjoyed the way this novel interweaves the personal experience of how dementia impacts a couple’s relationship, with themes of global and environmental responsibility. It’s pretty obvious from the outset that McKnight knows and understands the world she is writing about.

Alan and Pina have spent thirty years living together in isolated Boney Point, when Alan begins to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s. Pina feels as if she’s losing contact with her partner as he starts to forget things, lose his language capability and disappear into his own head. Then the arrival of a flock of rare, black cockatoos offers them a means of connecting, both to each other and the moment they’re currently living through. Conservation biologist, Arianna, is also obsessed with the black cockatoos. She’s trying to encourage them back to their natural breeding site before the flock dies out. Pina wants the birds to stay in her backyard where Alan can get the comfort and benefit of seeing them every day. Both women bring their own agenda to the issue of the cockatoos. Neither is being deliberately selfish but there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution to their problem. Either Alan will suffer or the birds will ultimately be put at risk. McKnight uses this small, and very localised dilemma, to highlight much bigger environmental issues.

Rain Birds is essentially Pina’s story. She’s struggling to come to terms with Alan’s Alzheimer’s, (“I have to stop thinking of him as if he’s already dead,”) and fixates on the black cockatoos as a means of preserving some degree of connection with him. As the novel progresses, she becomes more and more irrational about the birds, losing perspective as she tries to hold on to the one aspect of her life with Alan which she can actually control.

The novel includes some incredibly honest and very recognisable insights into what it’s like to live with a partner who’s developed Dementia,

“How she followed him around in circles, shutting drawers, finding his jacket in with the crockery, the milk left under the sink with the cleaning stuff, directing him to the bathroom when he couldn’t find it, the tantrums, the anger, the forgetting, always the forgetting. The way it could all turn a woman slowly insane.”

McKnight effectively uses the cockatoo situation as an extended metaphor for all Pina’s frustrations and disappointment. In the specific and personal she finds grounds to explore big universal themes of anger, control and loss. Rain Bird’s a wonderful novel, beautifully written and full of rich descriptions of the natural world. It’s one of the first accounts of Dementia and environmental issues I’ve come across. I sincerely hope to read more.

Rain Birds was published by Black Inc in 2017