Spotlight on the ABA’s ICYMI 50

To support the Australian Booksellers Association’s ICYMI 50 campaign, throughout February Books+Publishing is republishing reviews of titles featured in the promotion. ICYMI 50 books are available from selected independent retailers at a discount of 20% until 28 February or until stock runs out.

Muddy People (Sara El Sayed, Black Inc.)

With elegant lyricism, compelling urgency and a dark sense of humour, Muddy People by Sara El Sayed is an impressive debut memoir from the young Egyptian–Australian writer. El Sayed’s work fleshes out the vulnerable, private space between the well-accepted narrative of respectable, hard-working migrants living in sunny Queensland (‘good Muslims’) and the frayed, unspooling horrors of her parents’ separation and divorce. Her father (baba), in a classic example of the dark Egyptian humour that underlies the work, says, ‘I want you to know that if your mother and I divorce, it is your fault.’ El Sayed excels in intermingling the domestic with the public, in one scene utilising the metaphor of a rotting custard apple, which her father believes can fight cancer cells. The discussion then subtly and ingeniously gives way to criticism of Egypt’s political corruption. ‘You can’t believe everything you read on the internet,’ El Sayed says to him. ‘A lot of that is fake.’ The descriptions of her baba’s slow decline to cancer are finely told. His sharp wit and a certain brusque irritability are rendered with heartbreaking humanity and compassion. For El Sayed, well-worn social etiquette, such as receiving eligible suitors and paying deference to her grandmother’s wonderful cooking, all give way under the weight of absurd religious tradition and the seething rage around the many small injustices faced by an Egyptian daughter. In Muddy People, El Sayed’s coming to voice reflects her own journey of self-realisation, of understanding what it means to be a migrant millennial.

Daniel Nour is an Egyptian–Australian journalist and writer.

Echolalia (Briohny Doyle, Vintage)

Echolalia, Briohny Doyle’s skilful second novel, concerns a family on the verge of disintegration. Skipping elegantly between chapters set before and after a traumatic event that changes the family irrevocably, it explores not only the aftermath of the event in question, but also its impetus. When we first meet Emma, her ‘strength, memory [and] enthusiasm for everything’ is diminishing in the aftermath of the traumatic birth of her third child. Completely unsupported by her husband Robert, who comes from a family of wealthy developers, Emma is raising her children more or less on her own. She has a deep bond with their second child Arthur, who’s autistic, and it’s from his echolalia—a term given to the way autistic people sometimes repeat words and phrases, often to the confusion or outright hostility of non-autistic interlocutors—that the book takes its title. And indeed, it’s with hostility and suspicion that the rest of Emma’s family view Arthur, who couldn’t be more different from Robbie, the golden child for whom they’re already imagining a happy and fulfilling future. Echolalia is an ambitious book, tackling the enormous impact of trauma and how the lineage of misogyny is passed down through the generations, as well as how climate change ravages a landscape, but Doyle’s assured and empathetic writing is more than up to the task.

Jack Rowland is a writer from Melbourne.

Keep an eye out for reviews of ICYMI 50 books in each Books+Publishing newsletter during the month of February. Sign up to newsletters here.

Category: Daily Newsletter Feature