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.
