Things That Helped

November 27, 2017
Australian writer Friedmann makes her debut with this uneven collection of essays cobbled together under the theme of postpartum depression, though few of them really explore this issue. Many of the selections instead dwell on Friedmann’s experiences in the years before her son’s birth or hold forth on social justice and psychological theory, only barely referencing her child or her illness, giving the impression less of an unconventional approach to memoir than of difficulty finding enough essays to fill a book. The strongest pieces, however, are also those that directly deal with motherhood and depression. “Maribyrnong” describes in powerful sensory detail the betrayals of the body and mind that postpartum depression can bring. “Red Lips,” the collection’s standout, and “Center Stage, Five Dances, and Other Dance On-Screen” lyrically narrate how a makeup ritual and bingeing on dance movies, respectively, helped Friedmann regain ownership of her body after a traumatic Caesarean section and the ensuing physical and mental pain. By comparison, her essays on artistic struggles, grief, white privilege, violence against women, and marital difficulties lack insight and urgency. Too often, Friedmann misses an opportunity to reveal the evolution of her love for her son—and herself.

February 28, 2017
Canberra-based writer Jessica Friedmann makes an impressive debut with her essay collection Things That Helped. Having lived with depression her entire life, Friedmann has learnt to find comfort in cherished ‘things’. Each essay focusses on a different thing that has helped, such as a ballet film, a song and a painting. Parallels can be drawn with Ruth Quibell’s essay collection The Promise of Things, which also wove memoir and critical theory into her history of ‘things’. Quibell’s book, however, stopped short of revealing too much about her psychological state while Friedmann is deeply intimate with her reader. In Friedmann’s essays, the personal is very much political. Friedmann views the world through a lens of intersectionality, and she has a sharp eye for how gender, race and class shapes the family unit. She cleverly weaves eco-feminist and psychoanalytic theory into her memoir without alienating readers who are unfamiliar with these fields. Her language is deeply visceral, and therefore hugely affecting, when describing the feeling of pregnancy, motherhood and mental illness. Like Fiona Wright in her memoir about hunger, Small Acts of Disappearance, Friedmann doesn’t offer a conventional recovery narrative, but by experimenting with language and melding personal story and theory, Friedmann’s book makes readers feel and think. Emily Laidlaw is a writer and editor