Ghosts of the Orphanage by Christine Kenneally

‘It was a freezing day in January 2016 when I passed through a long-locked door and first set foot into what had been St Joseph’s Orphanage.’

I read this book last month and have struggled to find the words to review it. Child abuse is never a comfortable topic and yet ignoring the fact of it enables abuse to continue. Yes, while there has rightly been a significant focus on institutional abuse, most abuse occurs in the home and involves family members. Very few of those survivors receive justice either. I feel a need to state this upfront, so I can move beyond personal lived experience into the world uncovered by Ms Keneally.

While Ms Keneally focusses on St Joseph’s – a Catholic orphanage in Vermont in the United States – the patterns of abuse are similar to what has occurred in Australian orphanages.  Remember the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the final report of which was released in 2017?   Institutional abuse was not (is not) confined to the Catholic Church, other religious groups as well as secular groups were also part of the Royal Commission’s inquiry.

Central to Ms Keneally’s book is the story of Sally Dale. Sally was two years old when she arrived at St Joseph’s Orphanage in 1940, with three siblings.  Sally was separated from her three siblings as soon as she arrived.  Sally stayed at St Joseph’s for more than twenty years.

In 1993, Joseph Barquin approached Philip White, a lawyer, and told his story of terror at the hands of the Sisters of Providence. He spoke of what he had seen and of approaching the Catholic Diocese of Burlington requesting help. He was ignored.  He wanted to sue the church.  Mr White, who had devoted his career to ‘challenging and changing the prevailing wisdom about young victims of sexual abuse’ fought long and hard to try to obtain justice for Mr Barquin and other victims. Reading this reminded me of several similar cases in Australia. Any lingering respect I still had for the Catholic Church was destroyed during this process.

‘Often the traumatic memories seemed to work just like normal memory, meaning that an episode might blur over time. For some people, the more intense an experience was, the more likely they were to retain it as a vivid narrative. But there was a threshold, at least for some. If an experience was too disturbing, it sometimes vanished. Whether it was actively repressed or just forgotten, it seemed to disappear from consciousness for decades, returning only in response to a specific trigger, such as driving by an orphanage or seeing a nun at the supermarket.’

I kept reading, horrified to read of children as pharmaceutical test subjects:

‘It was mind-boggling to contemplate that the same children who were subject to humiliating punishment for wetting the bed were at the same time given a drug that made them more likely to urinate.’

Those poor children, humiliated and taught to fear those whom they should have been able to trust and to rely on for guidance and support. Some of those children, as adults, were brave enough to speak out. Sally Dale and Joseph Barquin are two whose accounts have stayed with me.

‘More than anything else, what the St Joseph’s plaintiffs wanted was recognition: they wanted the world to acknowledge their agony, and to say it should never have happened.’ What they got instead was a small check, the amount of which was yet another secret.’

I wonder whether, in (say) twenty years we will still be talking about examples of institutional child abuse? Sadly, I am sure child abuse will continue, and we will still be talking (helplessly) about it.

Meticulously researched and well written. Confronting, disturbing and uncomfortable.

From the Author’s Note:

‘All the events described were reported by at least one person but more often by many. In cases of abuse where usually only a survivor reports it, other individuals abused by the same person or in the same institution described the same kind of abuse.’

‘Ghosts of the Orphanage’ won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024, awarded as part of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 19 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘History’.

Fear: An Alternative History of the World by Robert Peckham

‘When, how and why did fear come to be shackled to tyranny and invoked in opposition to freedom, even as it is marshalled in support of this very cause?’

In this thought-provoking book, Mr Peckham considers the impact of fear in history.

‘I make two arguments in this book. The first is that different political regimes are enabled by the production of different kinds of fear, just as counter-fears, often unseen, disrupt the smooth operation of those regimes, sometimes shattering them, but often creating a pressure on them to evolve.’

And then, the second argument.

‘Tracing the history of fear can help us rethink assumptions about the nature of power, freedom, egalitarianism and market capitalism. We’ve been taught to think that fear is antithetical to democratic systems; in contrast to fear-dependent autocracies, where the repressive state uses terror to subdue its citizens, democracies, we’re told, protect us from coercive infringement on our lives. This is the book’s second claim. It is a mistake to assume that modern freedoms have been won by the abrogation of fear from political life. On the contrary, as we’ll see, state-sponsored fear has played a crucial role, not only in the ascent of modern freedom but also in the emergence of the economic order on which it has been built.’

As stated in the blurb, Mr Peckham begins with Black Death in the fourteenth century, takes us through the French Revolution and on to various social movements in the nineteenth century, through modern market collapses, Cold War paranoia, on to the AIDS pandemic, and finishes in the twenty-first century:  the rise of terrorism, yet another pandemic, eco-anxiety, and the increasing impact (for better and worse) of digital culture.

There is a lot of information to digest, and the book is accompanied by over a hundred pages of notes and a comprehensive index. While I am most familiar with history around various pandemics, the rise of technology and the impact of stock market crashes, I had not thought as much about politics. Yes, in the past I was largely guilty of thinking that fear is antithetical to democratic systems. However, world events over the past eight years have mostly cured me of that assumption.

It took me a while to read this book. I had to keep stopping to consider some of the points made, to try to be objective about events and reactions. And now? I recognise that fear takes many different forms.

Fascinating.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 18 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘History’.

A Very Secret Trade: The dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania by Cassandra Pybus

‘It is time we all knew the truth.’

This is a very uncomfortable read. Yes, I knew that some skulls and skeletons of Indigenous Tasmanians had been taken by Europeans. Yes, I knew that some viewed Indigenous Tasmanians as a unique race and sought their remains for scientific examination. And yes, I knew that Truganini’s skeleton was on public display in the Tasmanian Museum well into the twentieth century before being (finally) returned to the Aboriginal community in 1976 and cremated.

What I did not know was how widespread the practice of grave robbing and desecration of human remains was. This book by Ms Pybus lifted the scales from my eyes. I had heard the name of Dr William Crowther mentioned in relation to this, but I did not realise that he was one of many involved.

‘The desecration of graves and mutilation of the bodies of First People no longer looked to be an isolated act by one or two morally deficient individuals; rather, it was a systematic process baked into the colonial project from the very beginning.’

Indigenous Tasmanians were viewed as scientific curiosities, like the thylacine and the platypus. Collectors and museum curators in Europe sought such curiosities for their collections. Reading this book, I learn that amongst their suppliers were several colonial governors, several politicians as well as Lady Jane Franklin, whose callous treatment of the Indigenous Tasmanian girl she called Mathinna was cruel and disgusting. In Britain, I read, that Sir Joseph Banks, the Duke of Newcastle and Professor Thomas Huxley were amongst the many who solicited human specimens from the colony. All of this took place without any regard to the cultural practices of the Indigenous Tasmanians. Skulls became trophies, bodies were mutilated to prevent other collectors from taking entire skeletons.

‘The frontier conflict was a boon to phrenologists. The skulls that were trophies for vigilante settlers were objects of scientific enquiry for the naval surgeons redeployed into the colonial medical establishment.’

In page after page of sobering revelations, three uncomfortable facts in particular stick in my mind. Firstly, that when he died one doctor had more than 180 skeletons. Secondly, that Truganini’s own wishes for the disposal of her body after her death were so callously disregarded. She was buried, despite her wishes, and then her body was exhumed by the Royal Society of Tasmania. Thirdly, the exhumation of Wauba Debar, whose memorial I have visited in Bicheno, in 1893. The exhumation was undertaken by the Tasmanian Museum in Hobart because of a scarcity of Indigenous remains.

As Ms Pybus writes:

‘Most people know the word for a systematic process of total dispossession, destruction and dehumanisation. It is a thorny word, genocide, freighted with much more disquieting baggage than most Australians can bear to own. I would not own it myself for a long time. After years of research into the hidden corners of the history of my beautiful island home, I find the fact of it inescapable.’

In this book, Ms Pybus shines a light on a very uncomfortable aspect of our history.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 17 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘History’.

Pretend I’m Not Here by Barbara Feinman Todd

‘So there it is, my life in an eggshell: my desire to be a writer, my desire to please, my complicity in my own disappearance, and my meek protest against that very fact.’

I picked up this book to meet one of the categories for a reading challenge I am participating in. Yes, I was looking for a book written by a ghost writer, and Barbara Feinman Todd certainly fits the bill. Yes, she was Hillary Clinton’s ghost writer for ‘It Takes a Village’. She also worked with Bob Woodward, first as a research assistant and then researching ‘Veil’, his book on the CIA. While I’ve read both books, I have not read two other books she assisted with: Carl Bernstein’s ‘Loyalties’ or Ben Bradlee’s A Good Life’.

Here in Australia, I was unaware that ‘Feinman Todd’s involvement with Mrs. Clinton made headlines when the First Lady neglected to acknowledge her role in the book’s creation, and later, when a disclosure to Woodward about the Clinton White House appeared in one of his books.’. But I can imagine how these events (especially the disclosure to Woodward) haunted Ms Feinman Todd. Discretion is surely paramount for ghost writers.

Ms Feinman Todd wanted to write novels but realised that she had a better chance of earning an income as a ghost writer. A realistic, but I imagine difficult, decision.

‘But I had built up a solid reputation as a book doctor, and this town would never have a shortage of people who wanted to “author” books but couldn’t or didn’t want to write them themselves. I had to make a living. It wasn’t realistic to think I could do that by writing novels, even if I managed to get one published.

Was it time to make my peace with being a “craftswoman” as Hanan so kindly put it? What did it mean that I had gravitated to work that required —or allowed? —me to be silent and invisible?

Was it really so different from the fiction I longed to write?

Was it time to give up on my fiction, even my own voice, and be grateful for what I had: a steady income and a comfortable life?’

For me, Ms Feinman Todd comes across as an observant and thorough researcher, as a thoughtful writer who was trying to find her place in a world full of urgency, egos, and testosterone.

Barbara Feinman Todd retired in 2017 after twenty-five years of teaching at Georgetown University.

‘Until the lion has a historian’ goes the adage, ‘the hunter will always be the hero.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 16 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Memoir/Biography’.

The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie

‘It was in a hidden corner of the Oxford University Press basement, where the Dictionary’s archive is stored, that I opened a dusty box and came across a small black book tied with cream ribbon.’

As I read this, I could just imagine how exciting it would be to make such a discovery. I’ve read a bit about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), but never really stopped to think about the contributors.

‘When I opened it, the first thing that struck me was the immaculate cursive handwriting. I recognised it as the familiar hand of James Murray.

He had written the names and addresses of not just hundreds but thousands of people who had volunteered to contribute to the Dictionary.

Finding Dr Murray’s address book was one of those moments when everything goes into slow motion.’

Ms Ogilvie takes the reader on a trip through contributors, working through the alphabet from ‘A for Archaeologist’ to ‘Z for Zealots’. Each chapter contained snippets of information about some of the contributors. At the end, under the heading of ‘Further Reading’, I came across some other books to add to my reading list as well as a couple I have read.

‘I expected more famous names in the address books. Instead, the Dictionary was largely a project of the crowd, the autodidacts, the unknowns.’

I found it fascinating to read about both the processes followed by Dr Murray and his team, and the lives of some of those who contributed to the OED. An amazing achievement!  I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the English language and the people behind the OED.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 15 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘History’.

The Swift Dark Tide by Katia Ariel

‘It seems to me that opening a marriage is less about trading permissions and more about riding a force. This is its brutal and wonderful power, its unstable elemental property, what makes it bloom like nitrous oxide and slide like mercury; the final stage of labour, irreversible and bloody.’

Katia Ariel, in a happy heterosexual marriage and the mother of three children, falls in love with another woman. In this book, Ms Ariel writes of her life and loves. She shares stories of her family: leaving Odessa with her mother as a child for life in Australia; marriage to Noah; their three children, especially the fraught birth of daughter Delphi; and then falling in love with a woman. Ms Ariel’s life, and that of her family, are turned upside down. What does it mean?

‘As I chop the coriander, I contemplate that I am a dialogue of longings, I am a being who comes into frequent contact with death, mostly the death of assumption that two people owe each other a lifetime of repetitive emotional statements and that there is safety in that. When I am in the roiling furnace of this life-choice, which is always, I am a dying thing, I am an ancient bronze scarab, I am a cockroach, I am a diamond.’

We each live one life (or so I believe) and choices matter. Ms Ariel has not made her choice lightly and is aware of the consequences. The world has not collapsed, those directly impacted adapt and adjust, or so it seems. As the story unfolds, we learn more about Ms Ariel’s family and history.

‘I’m often afraid too. I’m not telling you that this is easy, or risk-free. I am just telling you that I’m never going to live my life the old way again. I will stay in this because it answers questions about who I am. Because once upon a time I fell in love with this man, but now I am in something undeniable with this woman. And, mum, because I am a woman who loves women. I have always been that, I just didn’t know that’s what it was.’

As an engaged reader, I found myself wondering why I viewed this story any differently from similar stories where a member of a heterosexual couple finds themselves drawn to another (opposite sex) partner. Is it because it is less common? Is it because I am biased? Is it because children are involved? Is it because I am old, and have been married for over 45 years? Hmm. I’ve decided that it is a combination of ‘less common’ and a reluctance to accept that sexuality can be mutable. Inconsistent, I know, especially as I know several couples in similar circumstances. So I revise my assumptions, and read on. The language Ms Ariel uses to tell her story is rich in imagery, full of awareness, truth, and hope. Yes, this is one person’s journey but several of the issues raised are relevant to the formation and continuation of all intimate relationships.

‘It’s our optimism that kills me, the relentless trying, that feels like the loveliest animal impulse in all our endeavours. The way we pull but mostly push. Push back the ending we know so well, securing our wishful boats against that swift dark tide.’

A reflective read. One I may revisit.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 14 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Memoir/Biography.

The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin

‘Reading was my first addiction. When I tell people this today, they laugh and nod as if they understand, as if they too are part of a secret book-addict society whose greatest crime is staying up late, a flashlight under the covers, compulsively reading page after page.

I was searching for ‘a book written by a ghost writer’ to meet a particular reading challenge prompt and this was suggested by others undertaking the same challenge. Eager to complete the prompt, I borrowed a copy from the library. I picked this up knowing nothing about the writer or the topic.

Ms Hardin’s narrative begins midlife when, in the throes of heroin addiction which she has supported by identity theft, she is on the verge of being arrested and taken to jail. Her youngest child, her four-year-old son, is with her.  How did this happen?

‘The strange thing is, no one ever asks me what my second addiction is. I mean, someone who loved to read could never be a real addict, could they?’

Ms Hardin is convicted of thirty-two felonies. Her biggest concern is not losing custody of her son, who is living with Ms Hardin’s first husband (not his father) and family while she is incarcerated. Her current husband, also an addict, is also arrested.  What follows is a detailed account of Ms Hardin’s experience of incarceration, her success in regaining custody of her son, and finding a successful career as a ghostwriter. Yes, there are some slips along the way, but Ms Hardin realises that she has skills which enable her to help others as well as to find her own path.

‘I don’t yet realize that what I am doing is honing my empathy—the superpower of all great ghostwriters.’

I have mixed feelings about this book. While I don’t doubt the honesty of Ms Hardin’s account and am delighted that she found a life (and love) beyond addiction, I wondered about the victims of those thirty-two felonies. The aspect I admired most was Ms Hardin using her skills to help others. I agree, too, that to prove herself and move on she needed to forgive herself, to feel worthy of fresh starts and trust. On the other hand, I am judgemental and find it difficult to move on.

On balance, though, Ms Hardin’s example might inspire others to find the strength to break the cycle of addiction. I hope so. But part of me wonders whether this book would have been such a sensational success if Ms Hardin was not a representative of the educated middle class.

‘I am the neighbour from hell in the newspaper, but I am also the person in the acknowledgments of the books I help create.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 13 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Memoir/Biography.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

‘This book is by no means the last word on Sylvia Plath. Over time, new material will surface and new questions will emerge.’

Sylvia Plath (27 October 1932 – 11 February 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. In 1981, The Collected Poems were published, including previously unpublished works.  Sylvia Plath was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982.

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College. Sylvia Plath married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. They had two children before separating in 1962. Sylvia Plath took her own life on 11 February 1963, aged thirty.

I first read some of Ms Plath’s poetry in the 1970s, and recently reread The Bell Jar. And now, having read Ms Clark’s exhaustive biography, I feel that I have a greater understanding of the woman as well as the poet. I would need to revisit Ms Plath’s poetry now: what made an intuitive sense to me as an angst-ridden teenager would read differently now. I remember my sadness when I learned that Ms Plath died at the age of thirty. I wondered —and still wonder— what if … she had lived longer? Found the peace and space required to create?

Ms Clark presents a comprehensive, well-researched account of Sylvia Plath’s life. The nine-hundred-and-thirty-page biography is accompanied by almost two hundred pages of notes and index.

I finished this book grateful to Ms Clark for presenting a more nuanced account of Sylvia Plath’s life and work. And yes, by the end of the book even though I resisted strongly, I felt a small degree of sympathy for Ted Hughes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 12 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Memoir/Biography.

Death Row at Truro: The shocking true story of Australia’s deadliest sex killers by Geoff Plunkett

‘This is a work of non-fiction. The quoted conversations are taken verbatim from those involved, newspaper articles and other archival material. This book is fully referenced and verifiable.’

Yes, I confess. I read a lot of true crime, but I almost did not read this book. Why? Well, ‘shocking true story’ in the title reminded me of the sensationalist ‘reporting’ that so often passes for journalism these days. In this case, I would have been wrong.  Here’s an extract from the blurb:

‘Shortlisted for Australia’s best True Crime book of the year, 2023 (Ned Kelly Award – Australian Crime Writers Association).

Seven murders … seven weeks … the true story of Australia’s worst serial sexual homicides.

Christopher Worrell and James Miller killed as many people as the notorious serial killer Ivan Milat. They are Australia’s most prolific serial sexual homicide offenders, yet they are little known outside their home state of South Australia. This is an injustice.’

I remember vaguely these murders and that James Miller (the only survivor after Christopher Worrell died in a car accident that also took the life of Deborah Skuse) claimed that while he and Worrell picked up the young women involved, Worrell acted alone when killing them.

The women were:

Veronica Knight (23 December 1976; aged 18)

Tania Kenny (2 January 1977; aged 15)

Juliet Mykyta (21 January 1977; aged 16)

Sylvia Michelle Pittmann (6 February 1977; aged 16)

Vickie Howell (7 February 1977; aged 26)

Connie Iordanides (also known as Connie Jordan; 9 February 1977; aged 16)

Deborah Lamb (12 February 1977; aged 20)

Deborah Skuse (19 February 1977; killed in the motor accident that claimed Worrell’s life)

Miller died in prison in 2008.

Worrell and Miller met when they were in prison together. Miller was serving a sentence for breaking and entering, while Worrell was serving time for rape and breaching a two-year suspended sentence for armed robbery. After their release Worrell and Miller lived and worked together. Worrell has been characterised as a charismatic psychopath, and Miller as an awkward loner.

I have nothing more to say about Worrell and Miller: Mr Plunkett covers them and their motivations in this well researched book. I was saddened to realise that while I remembered the names of the perpetrators, I had forgotten most of the names of the victims. It is easy, sometimes, to become caught up in the horror of murder, to focus on the perpetrator and his/her motivation and forget those whose lives were cut short. There were people behind the names listed above, people with aspirations and dreams, people who are missed.

And, writing this review just two days after the tragic events at Bondi Junction, after the murders of six young people, we must remember them as people, not only as victims.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 11 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘True Crime’.

Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel by Pamela Mulloy

‘In the time of pandemic slowness, when we were considering the condition of the entire planet, when we couldn’t travel anywhere, I decided to go back in time, to think of the social history of train journeys, not only in longing, but also to understand what it is that we gain in movement, in travel.’

I read this book as I was preparing for a seven-hour train journey and thinking of a journey my husband and I are booked on in 2025: The Indian Pacific travelling across Australia, between Sydney and Perth. I have not undertaken any of the journeys Pamela Mulloy has, but I can relate to her love of train travel. My first long train journey was the overnight train from Melbourne to Sydney in 1970. Both cities were unknown to me then.

‘Why does our memory sift through events and leave so many holes?’

In this book, under COVD-19 lockdown, Ms Mulloy remembers her own journeys. She also mentions journeys by others: the train crash which made Charles Dickens fearful of train travel, Sarah Bernhardt being trapped in a blizzard in the Midwest in the 1890s. And I remember train trips in Tasmania in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the state still had a passenger train service.

There is something about train travel: more relaxing than flying, less stressful than driving.

As Ms Mulloy wrote:

‘Memories can be underrated but that was largely what we had under lockdown. The lived experience of going away, of travelling was not possible, but this time offered a rare period of extended reflection, not just of where I had been but how each trip had shaped me.’

For most of the travel I missed during the COVID-19 pandemic, trains are not an option. And yet there is something about train journeys which beckons. There are a few long journeys I can undertake within Australia, and I hope to complete them all.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and ECW Press for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 10 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Transportation’.