Wedderburn by Maryrose Cuskelly

Kim Kingston — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 05:34:22 +0000

There seems to be no real justification for 65 year old Ian Jamieson murdering three of his neighbours in October 2014; only a series of slights, real or imagined, which Jamieson felt required addressing. Jamieson and one of his victims had previously been friends but both were hard men, stubborn and unwilling to give an inch. Jamieson told police afterwards that “Five years I’ve been putting up with shit from these bastards [the victims] and I just snapped.” Exactly what he had been putting up with never became entirely clear through Jamieson’s subsequent statements, but it certainly was not enough to justify a triple murder. As Cuskelly states in Wedderburn:

”Violence is about exhibiting power and dominance, no doubt, but it is simultaneously about denying or disguising frailty. It is an assertion of boundaries, a shoring-up of status not only in the eyes of others but in one’s own estimation. It is a way of reclaiming honour and a form of ultimate conflict resolution.”

In other words, violence in this form is toxic masculinity at its most virulent.

Cuskelly is a fine writer, sensitive and restrained. She reminds me of Helen Garner and that is a huge compliment. She interviews family and friends of the victims with the guilty knowledge that they will most likely be unhappy with what she writes, and feel betrayed. But still, she tries. She also tries to get a sense of the character of the victims and perpetrator from the people of Wedderburn, while acknowledging the accounts she is given of their character and their actions are often contradictory. She tries hard to be fair, while acknowledging her own very human reaction to the brutality of the murders and the seemingly remorseless perpetrator.

What lingers at the end of the book is a sense of terrible waste; the wasted lives of the victims, the regrets of their splintered families and the almost endless waste of time during Jamieson’s torturously slow and self indulgent progression through the legal system.

The fact is that small men who feel slighted can do terrible things. Cuskelly’s examination in Wedderburn clarifies our understanding of why and demonstrates the damage this kind of poisonous, inarticulate masculinity leaves in its wake.

The post Wedderburn by Maryrose Cuskelly appeared first on topfivebooks.com.au.

Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

Kim Kingston — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 03:09:15 +0000

Into every life must come some pain, or so the saying goes. In this quite beautiful book, journalist Leigh Sales looks at how normal people deal with intense emotional and physical pain; how they incorporate it into their existence and continue to lead good lives. She also talks to professionals who deal with traumatised people at the worst times in their lives; the policeman, the priest, the Forensic Counsellor who takes people into the morgue to view their loved ones.

Sales is such an intelligent and compassionate interviewer. She is startlingly honest about her own reactions to those she is interviewing; she frequently has to hold back tears and is upfront about her utter lack of religious faith. In a piece I particularly loved, she meets Threadbo landslide survivor Stuart Diver and afterwards she mentally casts about through a list of her friends, searching for a suitable candidate to be Diver’s third wife. Sales also writes about her own frightening struggles with the health of her two sons and briefly mentions her marriage breakdown, wondering what life will throw at her next. She concludes that kindness helps with trauma; kindness from your friends, from professionals, kindness in allowing yourself to grieve and acknowledging bad things can and will happen to anyone. This book is quite a lovely thing to sit with, and read quietly.

The post Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales appeared first on topfivebooks.com.au.