Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Woman in gloves

by
August 2014, no. 363

In My Mother's Hands: A disturbing memoir of family life by Biff Ward

Allen & Unwin, $29.99 pb, 280 pp

Woman in gloves

by
August 2014, no. 363

For anyone who has ever complained about a difficult mother, or written a memoir about one, this is a humbling book. How trivial, by comparison, our complaints seem. The subtitle promises (or threatens) a disturbing memoir, and so it is. I found it difficult to get out of my head days after reading it.

Biff (born Elizabeth in 1942) Ward was the second child of historian Russel Ward, author of The Australian Legend (1958), and his wife Margaret. Their first child, Alison, had died at four months old, drowned accidentally when her mother fainted while bathing her. Russel told Biff this when she was five or six. That death haunted Biff’s childhood, but it was only much later that she discovered what had really happened. The unveiling of this secret is kept to the end, but its looming presence gives the narrative a creepy power.

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.