God Forgets About the Poor by Peter Polites

‘Start when I was born.’

In a novel which unfolds over seven parts, shifting between Greece and Australia, between mother, son and daughter, and across time between the 1940s and the 2020s, Mr Polites tells his mother’s story.

‘What do you mean it’s not interesting? People will want my story. My god. I sound like one of those wogs that used to come into the library asking where they tell their story. You know, they publish their own books. But my story is unique. I promise.’

While it is a truism that all stories are unique, this novel took me into a world of which I have little direct experience. Those who migrate are torn between two countries and cultures. One country is left but never forgotten, another is entered but often never home. In this novel, the mother, Honoured Citizen, has lived several lives both in Greece and in Australia. She reminds her son that while he knows her as mother, she has had other lives. And gently, gradually, those lives unfold.

I am taken to a village in Greece, to a home in which children are born (and sometimes die), and where Honoured Citizen herself had to spend a year in hospital as a child. How hard that must have been, for her and her family. We follow her story through adulthood, migration to Australia, marriage and children, until 2022, when Honoured Citizen is ill in hospital. There are overlaps between her story and those of her son, All Holy Citizen and her daughter, Resurrection Citizen. I read and wonder. And occasionally, I slip out of the novel to think of the past, of the many lives of others I have known. I feel invited to consider and contemplate, to recognise the journeys made by those who come before us. I am chastened, remembering the questions I meant to ask of my own family members, questions to which I can no longer expect answers.

I loved the first part of this novel and was gradually drawn into the balance. Yes, an interesting story.

Recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith