Review: Split by Lee Kofman

A strange confession. I have never dreaded writing a book review nearly as much as I have dreaded writing this one. And do not, for one second, think that it is because I hated the book. On the contrary, I loved it. There was something utterly compelling about every one of the autobiographical essays contained with the book. The difficulty with writing this review means saying a good-bye of sorts to a book that has been a solid companion over several days as I slowly devoured the stories within. And I am not sure how I feel about that.

Written by a number of different Australian authors and edited by Lee Kofman, Split is a collection of personal essays of significant endings and their aftermath. Opening with an essay by Graeme Simsion that talks about how he discarded his past self and the possible label that went with it, many of the essays veer into territory that is both heartbreaking and familiar. Virginia Peters talks about her daughter's charismatic but ultimately selfish first boyfriend, while Gabrielle Lord recounts her brief affair in Paris with a man who jumped to the wrong conclusion. Hayley Katzen talks about leaving South Africa and the heartbreaking events that cause her to return, albeit briefly. And then there is Sami Shah's essay on giving up on Islam and the fallout that resulted from it.

These stories are all have imperfect endings. There is not always the sense of closure that the reader might get from fiction, and this volume works better because of it. These stories offer the reader a sense of reality, a sense that everybody has moments where things don't end neatly, or perfectly, and this might just be enough to offer a sense of community--and comfort--to anyone who is suffering and who needs it.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Ventura Press for my review copy. 

This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2019.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more