By Cameron Woodhead,Fiona Capp
Copyright theage
When I read psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz’s previous book The Examined Life, I found myself wishing I could bring him my troubles. He is the kind of listener we all want. Attentive, rigorous, non-judgmental. This is not to suggest he presents himself as someone who can “fix” his patients’ problems. Analysis, he stresses in his latest collection of case studies, Love’s Labour, is a collaboration. If love’s labour is “the work we must do to see clearly ourselves and our loved ones”, much of that labour is a joint effort carried out in the analyst’s consulting room. Take the story of Matt. His closest relationships don’t feel real because he has been conditioned to repress anger and hate. When he sends Grosz a furious email saying that he doesn’t like him, Grosz knows progress has been made. Then there’s Ravi, who’s convinced his wife is having an affair. He breaks off the analysis, allowing this delusion to ultimately ruin his love for her because he can’t let go the “ecstasy of sanctimony”. Love’s labour, Grosz reminds us in this moving and insightful work, is never done.
All the Way to the RiverElizabeth GilbertBloomsbury, $34.99
On the surface, everything looked great. Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel The Signature of All Things had shown those who dismissed her as a chick-lit lightweight after the phenomenal success of Eat, Pray, Love that she was a serious, literary writer. But beneath the surface, chaos brewed. Although happily married, Gilbert was in love with her closest friend, Rayya Elias, but couldn’t admit to it. Only when Elias was diagnosed with terminal cancer did their bottled up love explode. “We were ecstatic, phosphorescent, dangerous, brilliant and full of wild courage,” she writes. Until, that is, this wild ride turned into a nightmare as Elias succumbed to her cocaine addiction and Gilbert fuelled it with her addiction to love and sex. Gilbert doesn’t spare herself or Elias while laying bare how abject and wretched they became. But, as a recovering addict, she believes that the truth is what sets you free. The high voltage intensity of this memoir, with its operatic declarations, is not for everyone.
Apron-Sorrow/ Sovereign-TeaNatalie HarkinWakefield Press, $49.95
“Sovereign-Tea.” There is so much packed into this poignant play on words. It speaks of the constraints on Aboriginal women in domestic servitude and of their quiet strength. Their job was, as Natalie Harkin so eloquently puts it, to “clean up the colonial mess”. To keep the white settlers’ homes tidy, to look after their children. Even though they themselves might have been taken from their parents or had their children taken from them. The documents Harkin has retrieved from the archives lay bare the chilling and patronising mentality of the colonial bureaucratic mind. A State Lady’s report on one Aboriginal woman in domestic service reads: “You need firm handling. You must realise that you cannot have your own way always in this world”. Set against this exercise of state power are the women’s stories and the memories of their descendants. Stories imbued with sadness but also with resourcefulness and dignity. Stories of artistic and musical talent, of determination and spirit. Here, their labour is made visible, their voices heard.
