I’ve known Odette, the author of Voices Within, for five years now. Over many a fine whiskey, I’ve heard a lot about her work as a contemporary shaman and her perspectives of working with people experiencing severe trauma. Client confidentiality always applied, obviously.
So when I finally managed to get my hands on Odette’s book, I knew, to some extent, what to expect. It wasn’t going to be an easy, breezy read. It would deal with mental illness and wellness and non-conventional healing methodologies. I was fully aware that it’d challenge my personal views on living with mental health issues while also providing well-researched strategies that worked for other people. In short, I was in no way doubtful that Voices Within will be an enchanting and thoroughly enjoyable read.
I should probably say that I have an intense curiosity of mental health issues and trauma, having grown up in an actively warring country, hearing stories of my parents running away from rioters and angry mobs that wanted to decimate lives. My mum was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia about 13 years ago, which is why Isabo’s journey and life with schizophrenia was of particular interest.
The book was easy to get into. About 20 pages in, I messaged Odette to say it reads as smoothly as fine whiskey, my ode to our shared passion for the warming beverage. But about 25 pages in, I stopped. The story was still going smoothly and the narrative felt flawlessly natural. But life got in the way and I had to deal with other stuff first.
Over the next 6 to 8 months I went back-and-forth, only managing a handful of pages at a time. Every time I returned from my break, however, Isabo’s story jumped right out at me, and I could carry on as if I’d never left. All that’s to say that the author has brilliantly kept the core thread of the story throughout the book so that regardless of where you drop off and when you pick it up again, you can always reorient yourself in the story at exactly the right spot.
Having read a few hundred books, and written a couple (unpublished ones) myself, I know that it’s incredibly difficult to travel between the past and present, and skirt around sensitive themes like multi-generational trauma without losing a sense of place. It requires a precisely organised mind. Which is funny because Odette as a person is more spontaneous and whirlwind-y than meticulous and organised. But that’s exactly what’s so great about this book—I know Odette’s been brewing this story in her mind for over 20 years, and in all that time, she has—consciously or not—managed to keep herself and her readers oriented.
Isabo’s voices within
This is a story of a teenager with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Her father is a wealthy and established lawyer who can afford her the most expensive care that the pharmaceutical industry has to offer. He is, however, irrationally reluctant to explore alternative avenues. He only wants to “fix” his daughter and he tries everything he can. Until he realises that everything he does to cure his daughter is only harming her. He relents and agrees to Isabo taking some time off to learn more about her mind and the possible cause for the voices that seem to haunt her mind. The rest of the story is this teenager’s exploratory journey into her mind—with a reliable and loving guide. On the way, Isabo endures loss, heartbreak, and a terrifying experience with fake guides.
The takeaway point
This is a brilliant read for anyone curious about what goes on inside the head of someone with any sort of mental issues. But you’ll do well to remember that if you met one person with a mental health issue, you’ve only met one person with a mental health issue. The condition is so vast and so diverse and so very personal that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution or insight.
This story, then, is a nuanced and well-articulated experience of one individual. It didn’t teach me how to deal with my mum’s schizophrenia. Nothing can, because Isabo and my mum aren’t the same. But what this book did do is to give me a previously-unknown insight into how not to treat my mum and how not to try and “deal” with her. This book taught me to be more patient and be more open to ideas, however wild they may seem. Because the mind of someone who realises they’re experiencing voices or visions is incredibly rich in imagination and creativity. Sadly, too many of such people are lost to medical systems that aren’t prepared to listen.
If you expect nothing, you’ll never be disappointed. But then, if you don’t expect something from an experience, it means you’re not invested in it. That you’re indifferent and neutral. At that point, is that experience even worth your time?
When I first heard Harper Lee had released a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, I was thrilled. I’d read that book a few months ago at the time, and snatches of Atticus and Scout and Jem were etched in my memory. That was 2017-ish. I’d stepped into my twenties, bright young thing, and had dutifully posted a photo of my reading journey on Instagram.
Go Set a Watchman would be a lovely way to relive those characters in a different, more mature light, I thought.
Life happened. So many other books took precedence over Lee’s second masterpiece. Indeed, it took a global pandemic and a second lockdown for me to get my hands on it. A lot had changed since Mockingbird, and far too much time between then and now.
However, my thrill remained unchanged. I still remembered Scout (although I might’ve accidentally said Scott in a few real-life conversations with friends), and I still loved the relationship between the old lawyer and his children, a reflection of my own relationship with my father, even though it was starkly different.
I had a lot to look forward to. Which is why the disappointment was enormous.
As readers, we last saw Scout as a pre-teen tomboy. When we see her again in the sequel, she’s 26 and a lady, more lady-like than I ever imagined she could be. Clearly, people are never who they were when they were adolescents. Disappointment 1. But it’s the reality. Harsh, but acceptable.
We then learn that she’s got a boyfriend now. Of course, she’s a straight woman of marriageable age. Why wouldn’t she have a boyfriend? But did it have to be her best friend, the one she grew up with? Cliché. Disappointment 2.
Still, it’s the ’50s, and the story’s set in small-town Maycomb. Having lived there all his life, Henry knows little of the life outside of his town. It’s probably not too surprising that he falls in love with what seems like the only girl in town. Speaking of which, where are all the other girls? Aside from showing up to a gossip party with stories of husbands and children, there aren’t many young women in town. Again, I tell myself, it’s a small town. Justifiable, to some extent.
We move on. Curiously, Jean Louise doesn’t know how to get into a car without hitting her head. She can drive, though. Sure, she lives in New York, where you don’t need a vehicle to commute, but come on, I’m 26 and can’t drive, but I still watch my head when I get into a car. Common sense.
Sure, Jean Louise’s character arc is to have her grow as a person. But there’s a difference between immature and nonsense.
If she’s mature enough to discard the name Scout and have people call her by her real name, Jean Louise (not Jean or Louise), then she’s mature enough to know how a car works, surely?
So disappointment 3: Jean Louise gives us a lot of mixed messages about who she is as a person.
Disappointment 4: “He poured himself a man-sized drink.”
Jem’s dead. And the only explanation we get is that he dropped dead on the street one day. He’d inherited his weak heart from their mother. Now I know that Jean Louise is the protagonist, and we’re interested in her personal growth. But I have a brother, and if he dropped dead suddenly, it’ll gnaw at my head and heart for as long as I live. Even if I recover from the initial shock, I’d still be unable to talk casually about wearing a hat to my brother’s funeral, with ‘he would’ve laughed at me’ as an afterthought. The absolute lack of acknowledgment for Jem’s death is alarming. Sure, there are a few mentions of it, but none seem enough. Disappointment 5.
It’s not all bad, though. Jean Louise lives in New York, and from the beginning, she’s doubtful whether she wants to marry Henry. Identity crisis, nicely done. Although, not. Fan of her leading him on to believe she’ll eventually say yes. Seems terrible, especially because he’s her best friend. Does she wonder if this would affect their friendship in the future? No, she doesn’t.
Jean Louise visits Calpurnia. Shows there’s still some love there. There’re a few pleasant moments for a while. Flashbacks to how Cal took care of the Finches are all good additions. Again, there’s one random instance of Jean Louise recollecting how Jem was Cal’s precious little Jem. It makes you wonder, as a reader, and want more, but the train of thought ends abruptly, leaving you wondering why she brings Jem up in the first place.
Childhood memories. I enjoyed these anecdotes, even though some were a bit drab. There’s some mild emotion as Jean Louise speaks about how Jem’s good friend, who went to Europe in the army, is the only one they hadn’t personally told about Jem’s death. Found out about it from the paper. That’s a grim way to hear your best bud passed away prematurely. It’s a helpful detail in the overall narrative. Even though it doesn’t do much to move Jean Louise’s story forward, it’s one of the more solid acknowledgments to Jem’s death.
Dr. Finch. No one can hate an eccentric old doctor. He’s exactly what Jean Louise needs—someone who’d tell her to shut up and listen, and when she doesn’t, slap hard enough to make her pause and reflect. I don’t support violence as punishment, especially for children, which is why I like that it comes from her uncle and not her father. From his interactions with Jean Louise throughout the story, we see that, like Atticus, he takes things in his stride, but he’s also a strong guardian and a second parent who watches her back. Every kid needs that—someone they can talk to other than their parents. The relationship dynamic between the two is interesting—unlike with Atticus, Jean Louise is far more direct and curt with her uncle without having worrying about hurting him or how he’d perceive her. In many ways, he’s helping her figure herself out. I also find it quite amusing that Jean Louise thinks of him as bat shit crazy when he’s probably the sanest person in the story.
Of course, all of these are small things that cumulate into my big fat opinion. But there’s also one big fat thing that takes my opinion from fat to dangerously obese.
Jean Louise is a 26-year-old independent woman who lives in New York among, possibly, a myriad of people from all ways of life. We see some reference to black people being a part of her everyday life, which is why she’s so indignant when her townsfolk look down on them. We see her as a modern-ish, socially aware young person. All that’s brilliant.
But she doesn’t understand human nature.
She can’t process the fact that her father is an ordinary man with complex emotions. That he has his own opinions and that he doesn’t have to embody her beliefs.
Of course, she’s disappointed in her father. She has expectations of him, as we all do of people we admire and look up to, and when Atticus doesn’t live up to those expectations, she’s upset. Just like I was with this book. That’s understandable.
But her reaction to all this is bizarre. She responds as if she’s never been disappointed in her life before. To me, that signals a bigger problem. She’s either never had people oppose her views or never had a genuine relationship with anyone else. The foundation of any relationship is trust, knowing you’ll still get hurt along the way. Even long-lasting couples would have conflicting opinions and disappointments. 26 years is a long time not to have known that.
Dr. Finch explains to Jean Louise that she’s so upset with Atticus because she regarded him as god. As someone who can never make a mistake. Now, we’ve all done this. We place our heroes (actors, musicians, writers, politicians, even) on high pedestals, thinking they’re perfect and incapable of anything less than godliness. That’s how humans work—we stupidly seek idols all the time. But we don’t do that with people closest to us, regardless of how much we adore them. If you’re close to someone, you’ll notice their flaws. That’s why it’s easier to set the god status to people we can’t reach—the distance enables our blindness.
That’s not the case with Jean Louise. She loves her dad dearly and grew up with him around. Even if she hadn’t realised his humanity then, she should’ve when she left home. Coming back every year should’ve opened her eyes little by little.
There’s a lot of psychological complexity to unpack in this story. Strangely, that’s also good—it’s made me mull it over, and that’s always a positive thing in book marketing.
In the middle of the book, we hear Jean Louise was born colour blind—a fact she doesn’t know (how?!). An odd detail to throw in at mid-point. However, towards the end, we go back to it, as Dr. Finch informs her she’s colour blind, referencing that to their conversation about black and white people. I’m not a fan of using “colour blind” in that context for many reasons. Disappointment 6.
The racism in this book is brazen, and coming from educated adults, it’s… ignorant. That does feel real.
I’ve learnt from various online reviews and commentary that this book was supposedly a ‘crappy initial draft’ never meant to be published. It’s also not a sequel. Makes sense. There’s just too much going on for it to be one complete piece of work. Apparently, this was the original, which Harper Lee then upgraded and published as the wonderful To Kill a Mockingbird. That does make me feel better—if Lee had indeed turned Watchman into Mockingbird, then damn, she’s one good writer, with a kickass editor.
I won’t lie. This book took me an embarrassingly long time to finish. Not because I’m a slow reader, but because, as is the case with so many books, I found it easier to put it down and not pick it up again. Another prominent book I did that to is One Hundred Years of Solitude, also by the same author. I might be sensing a pattern here…
Regardless, it didn’t help that the story picked up well into the story. It was designed to be a slow start, much like One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s almost as if Marquez was testing his readers to see if they’ll hang around long enough, if they were loyal enough, to endure the creeping pace of the initial chapters before bestowing upon them some of the greatest and heart-wrenching prose of all time.
In other words, Of Love and Other Demons features beautiful writing—writing that will stay with you well after you finish reading the book.
“Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses.”
I’m not pious. And I don’t enjoy the company of people who shove their religious beliefs on others. This story is scattered with Christian beliefs and the ancient traditions of bishops and exorcism. Even though this book personifies everything I’m against, I cherished the way it’s done.
I mean, just read this:
“The bishop could not continue, because the thunder resounded over the house and then rolled out to sea, and a biblical downpour cut them off from the rest of the world. The bishop lay back in a rocking chair and was shipwrecked in nostalgia.”
Isn’t that beautiful?
I started reading this book before COVID-19 was born. And now, as I got to the last page of the book and rethink the narrative, I’m amazed at the uncanny and coincidental reference to today’s reality.
This is the story of a young girl who’s bitten by a dog with rabies. Unfortunately, she didn’t contract the disease, and that abnormality made those around her, subject her to eternal damnation.
Gabriel García Márquez has given us a wonderful tale in Of Love and Other Demons.
It’s hard to say what Alexus imagined when she titled this book, St. John’s Wort. It’s the name of a European medicinal shrub known for treating depression. Like most of the world, if you consider the book at face value, you’ll think it’s therapeutic, that it calms and elevates your experiences.
It does.
However, as you read through the poems, over and over again, to make sure you don’t miss a beat or the depth of meaning folded neatly in between lines and stanzas, you’ll realise that Mayo Clinic was perhaps right. As one of the top possible side effects of St. John’s wort (the shrub), it lists agitation. Which is what you feel when you’ve read these poems.
Alexus doesn’t look at the world around her and burst into flowery language. Instead, her poems are deliberate. Each line, each syllable rings with meaning, and whether or not you directly relate to it, you feel what she sees, and you see what she feels.
Imagery is for the ear as much as it is for the eye, you learn as she describes in Laughter,
“I know God laughed when night bathed tabletop- tabletop cradled the New York Times, a pound cake. I sang carols over the brushed, high-hat hiss of a Vanilla Coke can.”
Alexus’s poetry isn’t simple. Layers upon layers of complexity lie in each poem, and she makes you work to reap the sweet benefits of the sadness lingering in those hard words.
“When I learned my father had an aneurysm, I thought about the day his brother had the aneurysm. I thought about Plath, then Hughes then about how suddenly I needed to buy pudding from the grocery store.”
When referencing a father dying of aneurysm, not everyone draws a parallel with Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy“, where she confesses struggling to forgive her father’s involvement in the Holocaust and his lack of self-care that resulted in a gradual demise. Alexus cleverly matches the Plath reference with the seemingly related Hughes, while instead, with a subtle streak, alluding to pulmonary artery aneurysms, a rare autoimmune disease first described by British physicians Hughes and Stovin.
Good poetry resounds though your being, leaving blotches of reality, like ink on paper, marking you for life. This collection of poems takes it further—you have to marvel at Alexus’s wordliness, the way she’s melded poetry with dark reality, and the way she’s dejargoned medicine, revealing it in bits, like droplets on whiskey, just enough to hit you with a boldness that momentarily disarms you.
It’s not, however, a book you need to pair with a high-edition dictionary—although a nice Riesling surely complements. Scattered throughout the book, in snippets that speak the truth as it is, are poems so simple and so pristine that you can’t help but pause to inhale the beauty of words.
“What among us won’t, one day, Be turned inside out?”
She asks in such tepidity that it strikes you, slices through your pretence, as intense as hot knife through cold butter.
Alexus ends that poem, Year of the Rabbit Hole, hinting at self-help, while artfully voiding her voice of the unworthiness that comes with such books.
This collection is a chain, flaunting a range of topics, all bound by the string of tragedy. Every poem is an ode to an incident in life—sometimes personal, often not—leaving you with a shudder, questioning you, and enticing you to question the world you see.
Musings from reading St. John’s Wort, a poetry collection written by Alexus Erin and published by Animal Heart Press.
When I was about 13, I decided I wanted to write—to be a published novelist.
Then life happened. Luckily, however, I still wanted to write. That’s how this blog came about, and ever since I’ve been writing plenty of self-declared short stories, opinions, random musings, and travel thoughts.
Moving to Canberra took my writing to a whole new level. I joined a writers group, and thanks to being exposed to incredible poetic talent, the embers of my poetry began to flare up. As a result, I’ve been writing and experimenting a lot with free verse poetic forms.
Now I’m super thrilled and proud to say that with the help of my incredible writers group, I’ve managed to get in on an anthology of womxn’s poetry from all over the world.
Published by Animal Heart Press, the book is called From The Ashes. It’s co-edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust.
The Chaos Within 