Tag: New Zealand

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“Memory” by Margaret Mahy

I’m going to be really honest. It took me longer than usual to get into Carnegie Medal winning writer, Margaret Mahy’s Memory. The novel opens with a quite lengthy, and somewhat confusing section which introduces us to the main protagonist, Jonny Dart. He’s drunk and angry and trying to get to the bottom of an incident which happened many years previously. He wants to track down a girl named Bonnie. It took me quite a few chapters to work out why and, even then, I wasn’t really interested in the backstory about his sister’s tragic and untimely death. Memory really began for me, the moment Jonny stumbled across an elderly lady, pushing a shopping trolley across a car park in the middle of the night.

In some ways Sophie, is the archetypal crazy old lady I frequently encounter in novels. She has Dementia. She lives alone. She dresses oddly and doesn’t eat properly and has let her house fall into disrepair. She owns many, many cats. She is, like every other crazy old lady, firmly stuck in the past. What saves Sophie from becoming a stereotype is the way Mahy gives her quirks and foibles peculiar to her. There’s also a level of gritty honesty here which I’ve rarely encountered in those YA books which tackle the subject of Dementia. Through a series of slightly contrived events, Jonny moves in with Sophie and becomes -if only temporarily- her live-in carer. Mahy gives the reader an unflinching picture of what it means for a young man in his early twenties to care for an elderly stranger, especially one of the opposite sex.

She describes Jonny’s concern over the state of Sophie’s house with a wonderfully accurate matter-of-fact tone. Similarly, Jonny despairs of her eating habits but when she gets distressed offers her a packet of biscuits and tells her to comfort eat the lot. There’s also no squeamishness when it comes to describing the more personal aspects of Sophie’s care such as dealing with her incontinence and helping her to bath. So many of these ‘young person befriends a quirky senior’ narratives shy away from tackling the physical aspect of caring. I’m grateful that Mahy included these vignettes and also offers her readers a kind of manual for how two people can negotiate around each other’s vulnerabilities to find a means of caring for each other. There’s a lot of dignity at work in this book. 

By the time I’d finished Memory, I was captivated by the relationship between Sophie and Jonny Dart. I loved their humour and their warmth. I loved the way the story is grounded in the New Zealand where Mahy grew up. I could’ve done without the flashback episodes or the snippets of lyrics from pop songs which made the book feel a little dated in places when actually the central relationship reads as incredibly contemporary and really fresh.

Memory was published by Harper Collins in 2002 

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Book Reviews

“Alzheimer’s and a Spoon” by Liz Breslin

Alzheimer’s and a Spoon – Liz Breslin

In New Zealand-based poet Liz Breslin’s first full collection she turns her attention to her own grandmother’s experience with Dementia. Her Polish babcia, Manuela was a devout Catholic, a soldier in the Warsaw uprising and an incredibly interesting women. In these 75 short poems Breslin documents her life, her experience of Alzheimer’s and her death. She includes several poems based on the research and case notes of Alois Alzheimer, the German psychiatrist and neuropathologist credited with first discovering the disease. 

Peppered with photographs illustrating parts of her grandmother’s story and intriguingly shaped word poems, the collection isn’t afraid to play with form. Snippets from recorded interviews with Breslin’s grandmother are woven into the poetry, whilst in other places, Alzheimer’s own notes are presented as found poems. As the poet skips from one form to the other, dipping in and out of found text, thoughts, narrative and impression she effectively conveys a feeling of confusion and disorientation; a most fitting evocation for a poetry collection concerned with exploring the experience of Dementia. There’s a sense here of language and narrative falling apart; “where are they off to, these words/ I am losing?” 

However, Breslin’s main focus is the gradual erosion of her grandmother’s memory. I was particularly impressed by the variety of metaphors and images she uses to express this gradual loss. In Eulogy at the Oxford Oratory, memory is powerfully and tenderly equated with a set of her grandmother’s rosary beads. 

“Warm with memory, some will

spill. Some I’ll keep in corners,

hidden glimmers. Much has been lost.”

Alzheimer’s and a Spoon is an honest, warm and occasionally funny look at what it’s like to watch a loved one forget their own past. It explores issues of culture, distance, language  and history through the lens of Dementia. There’s a big life and a lot of story tucked between the lines of Breslin’s short poems. When, at the beginning of dichotomy, she writes,

“Please pass me a scrumpled ball through the bars

secret me the memories you don’t speak

I hear the whispers of your stalwart war

but never from your tongue, never for real

it’s just stories, right?”

Breslin gives us a little insight into the mammoth task she’s set herself; telling the story of a woman who can no longer tell her own story.

Alzheimer’s and a Spoon was published by Otago University Press in 2017 

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Book Reviews

“The ACB With Honora Lee” by Kate De Goldi

with illustrations by Gregory O’Brien

I absolutely adored The ACB with Honora Lee. It grabbed me the moment I opened it. I’m always on the look out for books which help children and young adults to understand what it’s like living with Dementia and I could instantly see how this book would appeal to mid-Primary aged children and help them process some difficult issues. Gregory O’Brien’s gorgeous illustrations explode across the inside cover and continue throughout, bringing main character, Perry’s thoughts to life in what look to be a series of colourful mind maps. I particularly enjoyed the way the story and illustrations bring different perspectives to the forefront and yet also compliment each other superbly in this short novel.

Perry is an only child with a very inquisitive outlook. Her favourite word seems to be why. She’s trying to figure out the world around her by constantly bombarding the adults in her life with questions. Sometimes she gets the answers she’s after. Often, she feels as if she’s being fobbed off. Perry has a wonderful relationship with her gran, Honora. She’s been Perry’s go to person but now she lives in a retirement home called Santa Lucia. Perry still visits regularly, accompanied by her parents or more frequently, her childminder Nina and Nina’s son Claude. They not only spend time with Honora but form a kind of community with the other residents.

Within a few chapters it is clear that Perry’s gran isn’t the same as she used to be. Gran is confused and sometimes doesn’t even recognise Perry. Perry finds this a bit distressing but instead of abandoning her trips to Santa Lucia, she tries to find a new way for them to connect. She begins to work with her gran on a school project, compiling a quirky and sometimes confused ABC of the older woman’s life. Through the ACB (as Honora calls it), and time spent together, Perry comes to understand a little more of the illness her gran is living with and finds new ways to bond with her as she now is.

The strength of The ACB with Honora Lee is to be found in the way Kate De Gold allows us to see Dementia through the eyes of a young child. Perry describes and explains things in her own childlike way and I found the tone she takes incredibly reassuring.

“So far, all Perry knew about Gran was her name – Honora Lee- and her age – seventy-six years old – and that she didn’t have a husband or much memory any more, which was why she lived at Santa Lucia and could never get Perry’s father’s name right.”

The book is an excellent resource for children who are learning how to live with a loved one who has Dementia. The tone is upbeat, fun and full of little quirks and yet the book doesn’t shy away from some of the harsher realities of living with Dementia. There are plenty of opportunities presented by the story for talking about the sad and difficult changes Dementia can bring about. However, the message comes across loud and clear in both the written text and the illustrations. A special friend or loved one living with Dementia is still the same special friend or loved one. There are ways in which to continue enjoying your time with them and, if you’re anything like Perry, you might even learn something in the process.

The ACB with Honora Lee was published by Hot Key Books in August 2015