Member Reviews

Kate W, Reviewer

Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh recently won the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize 2024. I can see why it caught the eye of the judges - it's all about structure. And the small, but well-observed domestic details.

The novel follows three women from the same working-class community in Wollongong, New South Wales. Their stories are told as stand-alone episodes but as the book progresses, it becomes clear how their stories are interlinked. Maryanne, a mother in the late 1970s, sacrifices everything for her family, but as her two daughters become teenagers she realises that she has lost touch with her true self, and takes drastic action.
Every year, Christmas had felt less like something they did and more like something that was done to them. At least it felt that way to Mary Anne.
Adolescent Vivian also finds herself surrounded by family but feeling painfully alone. She turns to alcohol and sex, and after drifting aimlessly for years, eventually settles into a relationship and pregnancy, hoping that motherhood will give her some direction. But that is not to be, and she too takes drastic action.

Evie, a confused child, wonders what she should have done to make her mother stay.


The women's stories explore what we give to our families and what we take from them - intentionally or otherwise. This is examined in a direct way - Evie speculates on physical and behavioral traits that can inherited - but the theme of trauma, inter-generational trauma, and the role of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics" target="_blank" rel="noopener">epigenetics</a> is illustrated in each of the stories.

What if there was a Gumtree for families? Or a Buy Swap Sell? If you didn't get the kid you hoped for - if you want a boy who loves playing football and getting dirty but instead you get a girl who likes birds and trumpets and reading books and telling you facts - what if you could do a swap? DNA makes us fifty per cent similar to our parents but also fifty per cent different, so there are no guarantees.
Once I came to grips with who was who, and the fact that Darragh had abandoned chronology, I enjoyed the unusual structure of this book. There's enough in the detail that gives you clues about the age and life stage of each character, which allows you to piece together the connections between each of the women.

And of the details, I became totally immersed in the meticulous references to eighties popular culture - Walkmans; Dolly magazine; going to parties that you were a bit 'young' for; ear-piercings that aren't quite right... while some of these things weren't exclusive to the eighties, many of Vivian's scenes aligned to my own experiences as a teen.

Lastly, Darragh has tackled the fact that some women deeply regret motherhood. She does this sensitively but there's no hiding the fact that for the women in these stories, motherhood is not straightforward. And that's realistic, right?

I received my copy of Thanks for Having Me from the publisher, Allen & Unwin, via <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/308723" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NetGalley</a>, in exchange for an honest review.

3/5

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