My mother died with Alzheimers. One day, when I wasn’t quite sure whether she knew who I was or not, she became quite agitated and said “It’s getting late. My mummy will be worried about me”. It was poignant: her mother had died when she was about 7, and I had never once in my life heard her refer to her “mummy”.
You Must Remember This is written from experience of child with a parent with Alzheimers- you can tell. The chapters are not in chronological order, with the book starting with Chapter 10 as Grace is heading along a busy road at night. This prompts her daughter Liz to put her into aged care, where she is bewildered by the presence of strangers, including her daughter. Memories come fleetingly, before she can put them into words.
As she struggles to find a firm footing for her memories, she goes back to her childhood with her alcoholic parents. Her father had been in the war and her mother worked as a nurse, but with such an alcohol problem you wonder how she held down a job. She met her husband Howard when she was working in an office although she didn’t remember that he had since died. She loved him all her life. These chapters are interspersed between the present day chapters, in no particular order.
The book is set in Western Australia and it ‘feels’ Australian. Wilson has a lovely turn of phrase: he describes an old man as having “cheeks like billiard balls” (p. 33) and when someone coughs, they make a sound “like an empty spray can” (p. 78).
This is only a small book – at 169 pages it’s a novella really- but it rings with authenticity. It was short-listed for the Miles Franklin but I don’t know if it has the heft to be a winner (and it didn’t). But it is sad, tender and you just know that it’s absolutely true.
My rating: 8/10
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library
Read because: Miles Franklin shortlist.
