A moving, and beautifully written, emotional rollercoaster.
Feature image credit: Kristina Tripkovic (via Unsplash)
For several years, writer Heather Taylor-Johnson has struggled with how to tell this story. Or maybe she has struggled with how to define what this story is. Or maybe both.
For U.S.-born, Adelaide-based Taylor-Johnson, this telling of her mother’s mother has been a long train coming, and not an easy journey. Her grandmother was a narcissist alcoholic; neglectful and needy, she is the sort of woman who should never have had children. Taylor-Johnson asked her mother to dig deep into her emotional archives, to relate stories and feelings from this awful childhood.
Riding that wobbly line between fiction and memoir, Little Bit, is like one of those old 3D pictures: tilt it one way and it’s a dog; tilt it another and it’s a fire truck. It is both. It is neither. It is its own, delightful, genre.
Between the covers of this work are five generations of women. But central to them is the character of Debbie, the neglected daughter, who goes on to become the mother of the writer. Through chapters on Debbie, her mother Stella, and her daughter, and chronicler, Taylor-Johnson puts together the puzzle of a family, and of a line of strong, sometimes troubled, women. Interestingly, it is Stella’s chapters that are written in first person, as Heather tries to find some goodness, some humanity, in a character who could otherwise become a mere cipher for badness (one is loathe to use the term “evil” as it doesn’t truly fit). Through the pages we witness the making of a dynasty, not through conquest or money, but through hard emotional labour, compassion, honesty, and a dab of forgiveness. Alongside this familial journey sits that of the writer, and her myriad questions. How do I parse a life? How do I embody emotions so complex the character cannot even name them? How do I honour another’s pain without disrespecting the love they had for the person who hurt them?
If anybody can successfully navigate their way around these literary chicanes, it is Taylor-Johnson. Her writing is crisply poetic, sparsely lyrical, and intelligently accessible. Her characters are real, and alive, and knowable. And although the stories of Stella, Stella’s own difficult mother, Debbie, Heather, and Heather’s children, weave in and around each other, the narrative stays roughly chronological. The dual arcs of the family history, and the history of the writing of the family history, walk hand-in-hand to an apposite, and moving, ending.
Little Bit is another triumph for Taylor-Johnson whose writing includes fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and reviews. Engrossing, moving, funny, and real, this may be her magnum opus.
Disclaimer: Heather Taylor-Johnson is an occasional writer for Glam Adelaide.
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
X: @TraceyKorsten
The views expressed in this review belong to the author and not Glam Adelaide, its affiliates, or employees.
Distributed by: Wakefield Press
Released: August 2024
RRP: $32.95
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