A Writing Life by Bernadette Brennan

Author:Bernadette Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

What happened to Daniel Valerio reflects on us all, on our private and public natures. It stirs up deep fears about ourselves, and makes us frightened and ashamed. I don’t see how it is possible to contemplate Daniel’s story without acknowledging the existence of evil; of something savage that persists in people despite all our enlightenment and our social engineering and our safety nets, something that only philosophy, religion or art can handle.

True Stories concludes with ‘Marriage’, ‘Death’ and ‘Labour Ward, Penrith’. In ‘Marriage’, the ‘sceptical, ironic but still… benevolent’ Fairy Blackstick, recently separated from her second husband, revels in the array of emotions, personalities and ‘tiny human dramas’ on display during a variety of civil wedding ceremonies.

In ‘Death’, as in ‘At the Morgue’, Garner’s intense observation bestows dignity on the deceased and respectfully records the care with which their bodies are handled. Garner explained in an interview with Ramona Koval for Australian Book Review that watching the cremations ‘changed her way of looking at life and thinking what it meant’. In the essay, she writes about her ‘conviction’ that life could not possibly end at death. In conversation, she stresses that she felt rather than thought or believed in this possibility:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.