What is taboo in any family or in any society is never fixed. And
neither is that body of family information which everybody knows
but no one talks about. Mental illness is one such subject, and it
created a kind of fence around one central element of Thomson's
work in the 1980s - his grandfather Hector's story. He has had the
courage to take that fence down and use a range of sources to enter
the no man's land of suffering and isolation which was a part of
his grandfather's life, and perforce, that of his grandmother and
the young child who became his father. When the first edition was
in preparation, Alistair Thomson's father objected strenuously to
any mention in the book of his father's (Alistair's grandfather's)
mental illness; reluctantly Alistair agreed to leave out the
subject. We can understand why the author's father, himself a
soldier, felt so strongly. The images were too hard to bear for the
man who was a young boy in the 1930s, living through very, very
hard times with his disturbed father after his mother's death. Now,
afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, but still able to read the
text, he gave his son permission to tell the story. And it is a
compelling and important one. From that story, we see the price
families and in particular wives paid for the multiple wounds men
brought home with them from war. What the second edition shows was
the sheer force of survival in his grandmother Nell, who had not
only the handful of two small boys to raise, but a damaged husband
to support. And making her life harder still was that her husband's
disability was very hard to define precisely....We know that the
damage war does to families is generational; it doesn't stop when
the shooting stops. It is passed on indirectly from father to son
to grandson, and to the women with whom they live. By retelling his
family's story, Alistair Thomson has been able to fashion a moving
portrait of his family: his grandmother Nell, and after her death,
of their sons, Al's dad and his uncle, still children, having cold
mutton for Christmas dinner, alone with their father, a soldier of
the Great War. -- Jay Winter, Yale University *** Anzac Memories
was first published to acclaim in 1994 (by Oxford University Press)
and has achieved international renown for its pioneering
contribution to the study of war memory and mythology. War
historian Michael McKernan wrote that the book gave "as good a
picture of the impact of the Great War on individuals and Australia
as we are likely to get in this generation," and historian Michael
Roper concluded that "an immense achievement of this book is that
it so clearly illuminates the historical processes that left men
like my grandfather forever struggling to fashion myths which they
could live by." In this second edition, author Alistair Thomson
explores how the Anzac legend has been transformed over the past
quarter century, how a 'post-memory' of World War I creates new
challenges and opportunities for making sense of Australia's
national past, and how veterans' war memories can still challenge
and complicate national mythologies. Thomson returns to a family
war history that he could not write about 20 years ago because of
the stigma of war and mental illness, and he uses newly-released
Repatriation files to question his own earlier account of veterans'
post-war lives and memories and to think afresh about war and
memory. (Series: Monash Classics)
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
