Tissue by Sally Berridge 235 pp.
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Tissue is both an autobiography and a comment on the autobiographical process. The first part describes a life lived in four countries: British India, the British colony of Kenya, England and Australia, and the consequences of the end of colonialism for a child that was inadvertently part of it. It also describes a return to Kenya in 2003 to find a lost farm, and a lifelong search for a lost mother and her family in England. Discoveries included an eight-hundred-year family tree in Dorset, and ancestor, Isaac Gulliver, who was an etremely successful smuggler out of Poole Harbour in the 1800s, and a British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, who amongst other political achievements, formed the first British police force.
The second part of the book looks at some of the ideas around autobiography that may be taken for granted: issues of memory, identity and time, and cultural narratives may affect the ways in which autobiographies are written. Also the practical necessity of editing one's story means that certain events or people are omitted, calling into question the accuracy of autobiographical stories.
The second part of the book looks at some of the ideas around autobiography that may be taken for granted: issues of memory, identity and time, and cultural narratives may affect the ways in which autobiographies are written. Also the practical necessity of editing one's story means that certain events or people are omitted, calling into question the accuracy of autobiographical stories.
Reviews
1. Blueink review
Tissue
Sally Berridge
Xlibris, 248 pages, (paperback) $24.19, 9781499020151 (Reviewed: December, 2014)
Replete with genuine feeling and admirably short on self-pity, Sally Berridge’s engaging memoir captures with originality a peripatetic, sometimes turbulent life.
Born in India in 1937, she was “a daughter of the Raj” whose family for generations peopled the British Empire’s reach across the globe. She first went “home” in 1945, three years after her mother’s death from typhoid; a poignant “Letter to My Past Small Self” captures the bewilderment of a seven-year-old uprooted from everything familiar at the behest of her father Bill, a career soldier whom she matter-of-factly depicts as emotionally remote.
Stepmother Joyce gets credit for taking on two young children and a daunting pioneer existence in Kenya, where the family relocated to establish a farm in 1948, but she was also bossy, and the Berridge family life was cold. Berridge married at 22 while still at university in England, then moved to Australia with her husband and three small children in 1965.
Berridge writes vividly about pre-independence Kenya, hilariously about her ramshackle start in Australia, and charmingly about her devotion to rambunctious grandchildren. Her memories are conveyed elliptically, in non-chronological order that nonetheless makes clear both the basic facts of her unusual experiences and the psychological journey that underpinned them.
Several interspersed chapters show Berridge searching for more information about her mother’s life and death, then discovering maternal relatives in England. She writes movingly in conclusion about how this reconnection to her roots helped her “travel back to Australia to look at my life here with new eyes.”
Part II, “Ideas About Autobiography,” finds Berridge reflecting on the genre. It’s clear that her fresh approach in her own writing grew from extensive reading and thinking about the form, and her summary of pundits from Roland Barthes to Antonio Damasio is unfailingly intelligent. Still, this discussion feels like an unnecessary appendage here. This is a moving memoir that deserves to stand on its own.
Also available in hardcover and ebook from Amazon.
2. Local author review
Tissue by Sally Berridge
Reviewed by A de H, writer and poet, Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
‘Who am I? What am I? Where did I come from? Am I like my mother? Am I like my father? Where do I belong?’ These are some of the questions Dr Sally Berridge asks in her autobiography, Tissue. They are the questions asked by most autobiographical writers. And indeed, the questions most of us ask ourselves at different stages of our lives. But Sally Berridge has chosen a non-traditional form to examine her life: travelling backwards and forwards in time and place; using poetry, accounts of dreams, pastiche, song and recipes to bind the narrative; investigating her past and her ancestors’ lives in forensic detail.
An autobiography can be boringly written and unengaging: I was born then...I went there...My parents died and I left home, got married, had children, worked etc. Tissue is not like that.
Born in the foothills of the Himalayas in pre-war India, Sally Berridge’s life changed overnight when she was four with her mother’s sudden death from typhoid. This loss is examined in poignant detail by the author, who continues her ‘search’ for her absent mother. She wears her mother’s pearls. ‘...is the golden colour from your sweat?’ She locates her mother’s grave and then researches her mother’s ancestors.
The book details childhood life in colonial India and Kenya and follows the author’s journeys back to those locations. One of the most moving accounts describes the discovery of her mother’s ancestral Dorset village, Chettle. On Win Green, a high point just down the road from Chettle, Berridge writes... ‘I have found the bedrock of my life...It has waited for all those long years, keeping a space for me, only me.’
The book is full of imagery and poetry, lyrical and haunting. There are comedic descriptions of life in Kenya, mingling with myth and history, and a scholarly examination of autobiography, memory and identity.
One definition of the word 'tissue' is: ‘a cloth interwoven in gold or silver.’ This implies great richness, treasures to be savoured. This book is filled with them.
1. Blueink review
Tissue
Sally Berridge
Xlibris, 248 pages, (paperback) $24.19, 9781499020151 (Reviewed: December, 2014)
Replete with genuine feeling and admirably short on self-pity, Sally Berridge’s engaging memoir captures with originality a peripatetic, sometimes turbulent life.
Born in India in 1937, she was “a daughter of the Raj” whose family for generations peopled the British Empire’s reach across the globe. She first went “home” in 1945, three years after her mother’s death from typhoid; a poignant “Letter to My Past Small Self” captures the bewilderment of a seven-year-old uprooted from everything familiar at the behest of her father Bill, a career soldier whom she matter-of-factly depicts as emotionally remote.
Stepmother Joyce gets credit for taking on two young children and a daunting pioneer existence in Kenya, where the family relocated to establish a farm in 1948, but she was also bossy, and the Berridge family life was cold. Berridge married at 22 while still at university in England, then moved to Australia with her husband and three small children in 1965.
Berridge writes vividly about pre-independence Kenya, hilariously about her ramshackle start in Australia, and charmingly about her devotion to rambunctious grandchildren. Her memories are conveyed elliptically, in non-chronological order that nonetheless makes clear both the basic facts of her unusual experiences and the psychological journey that underpinned them.
Several interspersed chapters show Berridge searching for more information about her mother’s life and death, then discovering maternal relatives in England. She writes movingly in conclusion about how this reconnection to her roots helped her “travel back to Australia to look at my life here with new eyes.”
Part II, “Ideas About Autobiography,” finds Berridge reflecting on the genre. It’s clear that her fresh approach in her own writing grew from extensive reading and thinking about the form, and her summary of pundits from Roland Barthes to Antonio Damasio is unfailingly intelligent. Still, this discussion feels like an unnecessary appendage here. This is a moving memoir that deserves to stand on its own.
Also available in hardcover and ebook from Amazon.
2. Local author review
Tissue by Sally Berridge
Reviewed by A de H, writer and poet, Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
‘Who am I? What am I? Where did I come from? Am I like my mother? Am I like my father? Where do I belong?’ These are some of the questions Dr Sally Berridge asks in her autobiography, Tissue. They are the questions asked by most autobiographical writers. And indeed, the questions most of us ask ourselves at different stages of our lives. But Sally Berridge has chosen a non-traditional form to examine her life: travelling backwards and forwards in time and place; using poetry, accounts of dreams, pastiche, song and recipes to bind the narrative; investigating her past and her ancestors’ lives in forensic detail.
An autobiography can be boringly written and unengaging: I was born then...I went there...My parents died and I left home, got married, had children, worked etc. Tissue is not like that.
Born in the foothills of the Himalayas in pre-war India, Sally Berridge’s life changed overnight when she was four with her mother’s sudden death from typhoid. This loss is examined in poignant detail by the author, who continues her ‘search’ for her absent mother. She wears her mother’s pearls. ‘...is the golden colour from your sweat?’ She locates her mother’s grave and then researches her mother’s ancestors.
The book details childhood life in colonial India and Kenya and follows the author’s journeys back to those locations. One of the most moving accounts describes the discovery of her mother’s ancestral Dorset village, Chettle. On Win Green, a high point just down the road from Chettle, Berridge writes... ‘I have found the bedrock of my life...It has waited for all those long years, keeping a space for me, only me.’
The book is full of imagery and poetry, lyrical and haunting. There are comedic descriptions of life in Kenya, mingling with myth and history, and a scholarly examination of autobiography, memory and identity.
One definition of the word 'tissue' is: ‘a cloth interwoven in gold or silver.’ This implies great richness, treasures to be savoured. This book is filled with them.