It must be difficult to write a memoir of a story based in truth when so much of it happened when you weren’t there to bear witness. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be when that story is about your own family.
Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir is what I’d describe as ‘faction’; a combination of the facts of what happened to author Kristina Olsson’s family and her re-imagining of earlier events that took place before she was born and the feelings and emotions surrounding those key, life-shattering chapters.
The book tells the heartbreaking story of Olsson’s mother, Yvonne, who at 19 was forced to flee far north Queensland and her violent and abusive husband and in the process lost custody of her baby son, Peter.
Broken and shattered by the trauma of the relationship and its vicious breakdown, she is haunted by her loss of the baby boy she adored. After the birth of her second child Sharon, Yvonne meets with lawyers in attempt to try to regain custody of Peter, but is told that as a single woman in 1950, she had little hope and should give up trying. Meanwhile, Peter is growing up thousands of miles away, afflicted with his own set of ordeals including abuse, polio and homelessness. Yvonne eventually meets Arne, remarries and has more children, including Kristina. The family bears witness to Yvonne’s pain though often never fully understanding the depth of the events that have torn such a huge hole in the fabric of its makeup, until Peter and Yvonne are finally reunited.
This isn’t a story that is easily told, with so many different emotions and perspectives from a varied list of protagonists who themselves grow and change throughout the course of the narrative. The author’s absence for some key events is nevertheless supplemented by her wide-ranging conversations with a selection of family members (including her mother’s sisters) about their recollections and their feelings.
One of the more disappointing aspects is that the reader is left with so many questions. There’s also a sense that you want to dig deeper into some of the characters, including Yvonne’s second husband Arne. How did he deal with the trauma experienced by his wife, and by extension his children? How did he feel accepting Sharon (Yvonne’s second child by her abusive first husband) into his home and the stigma that no doubt came from a society far less tolerant than the one we live in today? Also, what of the other lost boy, Arne’s son, who later reconnects with his Australian relatives?
Towards the end of the book the author talks about how she came to write about the events. In a sense, this feels out of place because it breaks the storytelling, which she weaves so beautifully.
The other factor that doesn’t sit particularly well is when the book reverts into being a tribute to the author’s mother. Sometimes the glowing hindsight doesn’t sit well with the traumatised and broken character of which she paints a picture, though I have no doubt that Yvonne was a formidable and amazing woman to endure everything life threw at her. It is equally Peter’s story. And Arne’s story. And her story. And her siblings’ story. Yet at the end of the book, there is a single picture of Yvonne. We are given no images of the other family members and that emphasis feels misplaced.
Ultimately, this is a beautiful story of heartbreak and loss but also of hope and love. Its strength is in Kristina’s Olsson’s storytelling, which is beautiful. It was never going to be an easy story to tell, but Olsson paints an engaging picture of a compelling tale with multiple twists and turns.
You can’t help but finish the final page and hope that with all the challenges her family endured that they have all individually and collectively found the peace they so deserve.
Night Games has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2014. The prize will be announced on the evening of Tuesday 29 April.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Boy, Lost
by Kristina Olsson
Softcover
258 pages
ISBN: 9780702249532
University of Queensland Press
