Jennifer Lauck: Blackbird: A childhood lost

By JANE WESTAWAY*

I doubt that I'm the first to notice the similarity between the cover of this American autobiography and that of Once In a House on Fire, published by English writer Andrea Ashworth a couple of years ago.

I suspect the publisher of doing a quick recce of the rotten-childhood-memoir genre, spotting Ashworth's and thinking, "Hmmm, kids' legs from the knees down. Evocative, poignant, bankable. Ashworth's was a bestseller. Worth a try."

And who am I to say he was wrong? Lauck is already a US celebrity-survivor, coming your way via Oprah and with a sequel in progress.

She is 5 when her book opens in 1969, and adores both her parents. Unfortunately, her beautiful, sweet-natured mother is dying messily, with Jenny often expected to clean up the mess and her handsome father is largely absent. Jenny herself is utterly good, while 8-year-old brother BJ acts out the family's unhappiness by being permanently nasty.

Eventually Jenny's mother dies and her father moves himself and the kids in with Deb and her kids. Deb is a wicked, or at least unloving, stepmother and the kids are enemies on sight. Then, before Jenny is 10, her father dies too, and things go from bad to even worse.

The publicity material claims that Blackbird reads like great fiction because of Lauck's talent for presenting the pure perceptions of a child without leaning on the adult filter.

Charitably putting aside the first assertion, I take issue with the second. Not that Blackbird is especially badly written, but false naivety isn't, of itself, any more authentic or compelling than a retrospective adult point of view. And being confined for 400-odd pages to an adult reconstruction of an innocent mind makes, despite the miseries it endures, for a pedestrian read.

What made Ashworth's book a triumph was her sharp eye and lucid prose. In comparison, Lauck's story is overcooked and never comes near being a literary experience.

But these are quibbles in the face of the marketing machine and the rapturous public reception often given this kind of thing. Those eager to count their own blessings perhaps find the dogged detailing of personal misfortune and deliberate ill-treatment inspirational.

In any case, the culture of survivorhood holds that one hasn't survived, let alone moved on or found closure (supply your own cliches), until one has published the book. Lauck's won't be the last.

Little Brown

$34.95

* Jane Westaway is a Wellington writer.