My Father’s Suitcase (Mary Garden, Justitia Books)

Mary Garden’s My Father’s Suitcase, with its no-holds-barred tone, embodies the Anne Lamott epigraph, ‘If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better’. Readers of Garden’s previous works (Sundowner of the Skies, The Serpent Rising) may be familiar with her candour when sharing her life story. However, she is most vulnerable in My Father’s Suitcase, which will intrigue new and return readers as it delves into Garden’s experience as a survivor of sibling abuse at the hands of her younger sister, Anna. Garden drip feeds titbits of her life story in a non-linear timeline, from her earliest memories in Aotearoa New Zealand to travelling around India in the 1970s and finally settling in Castlemaine, Victoria. All the while, Garden’s life is punctuated by traumatic run-ins with her younger sister, which leave her mentally, emotionally, and, at times, physically harmed. This slow unfurling of the complex layers of Garden’s trauma keeps the reader gripped. Throughout the years of abuse, her wound is deepened by her parents’ ongoing failure to protect her, support her sister to access help for her mental health, or even acknowledge the abuse. Garden’s story shows how the dangerous aftershocks of decades of abuse can even outlive the abusers. My Father’s Suitcase is a must-read memoir, and while the topic may be uncomfortable, Garden’s matter-of-fact writing style is not. One can only hope My Father’s Suitcase is Garden reclaiming her story and an ultimate catharsis.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Eman Mourad is as an Australian-Egyptian emerging writer based on Gadigal land. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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