Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks and Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent are two luminous works that explore the nature of grief, identity, and the quiet, aching process of becoming.
After reading borrowed copies, I immediately bought hard copies of both books because I need them in my life forever. They helped me understand grief and longing for people, landscapes and times that are forever gone.
Brooks and Kent may seem to be travelling different roads. Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historical novelist, turns to memoir with an intimate meditation on the death of her husband. Kent, known for her haunting fiction, uses the writing process to contemplate homesickness, identity and self-doubt.
In Memorial Days Brooks grapples with the process of mourning, and how life and writing continue in the shadow of profound loss. Touching on mortality, memory and meaning it’s a contemplation of how we commemorate the dead, how grief alters in time but has no end date, and of how to live alongside absence.
One of the ways Brooks copes is to escape to Tasmania’s Flinders Island some three years after her partner’s death. It is in the solitude and hardship of living alone on this rugged island where she finally grieves properly and finds a way to survive her loss.
The book is deeply personal yet never indulgent as it chronicles her partner’s sudden death and her attempt to find shape in the aftermath. With lyrical prose she shifts between the past and present, and grief and gratitude. It’s a joy to read.
Kent’s Always Home, Always Homesick is a gentler, more fragmented meditation, but it is no less powerful. Grief permeates Kent’s essays as an undercurrent – it’s a kind of existential sadness that comes from leaving behind former selves, former beliefs, and unfulfilled expectations, rather than a single event. Kent explores what it means to grow up Christian and queer, to be a writer and a mother, and to inhabit a body and mind that are always in motion.
Kent’s love affair with Iceland, which began with her end-of-school Rotary exchange, is where she feels most at home, reflecting her idea of home being both a place and a feeling.
Her first book Burial Rights was the product of her obsession with finding out what really happened to the last woman executed in Iceland, Agnes Magnúsdóttir in 1830. Always Home, Always Homesick gives us a bird’s eye view into the blood, sweat and tears she put into telling that story in a way that honoured Agnes. It’s also an insight into the Icelandic love of literature, storytelling, family and acceptance.
Both books invite us to sit with discomfort. They are stories of resilience told with wisdom. The writing is sublime ̶ there’s no other word for it.
Do yourself a favour and read these books but be warned that after reading them you may feel an urgent need to visit Iceland and Flinders Island, both places sound extraordinary. Who wants to join me?
Where to buy
Shop local. Berkelouw Books Balgowlah, Harry Hartogs, Warringah Mall and Humphreys Manly, they’re Paige Turner’s favourites.
The Tawny Frogmouth Bookclub
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