Shadows of secrets and silences
Set unashamedly in 1990s Auckland, Kirsten Warner’s bold debut novel starts when Christel, rushing to get her two children to daycare and herself to her stressful job at a TV production company, unexpectedly falls in the street.
This, coupled with the first sentences of the synopsis, may lull readers into thinking The Sound of Breaking Glass is akin to, say, Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It: “Christel is at shattering point. She’s got two small children, her job in reality television is super high stress, she’s an activist with Women Against Surplus Plastic and now she’s being stalked . . . ”
But Warner’s book is so much more than a self-deprecating romp about the trials and tribulations of being a working mother dealing with family life and a demanding job. It quickly becomes a visceral and, at times, almost overwhelming story about how the past can crush us in the present and, if not confronted, well into the future.
Warner deftly juxtaposes Christel’s day-to-day life with her troubled teenage years as the only child of a Holocaust survivor who, while revealing snippets about his horrific past, keeps most of it undisclosed.
Perhaps that’s to protect his daughter; more likely, it’s because the pain is too much even for an adult to bear. But the keeping of secrets and the silences leave Christel in limbo, looking for hard truths about her family and her own place in the world. Unable to find answers at home, she seeks reassurances from those who have their own agendas and, ultimately, cast darker shadows over her life.
There’s a surreal element to the story — the golem of Jewish folklore is woven in and past and present become increasingly blurred. But Warner skilfully throws out more clues about what may be going on, culminating in a series of devastating and thought-provoking reveals.
Warner is a writer, journalist and musician who’s worked in television research so the sections of the book set at her reality TV company have a brutal authenticity. Her father, Gunter Warner, who passed away last year aged 95, was a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Holocaust survivor. It means there’s a strong element that must surely be autobiographical and, particularly in the closing chapters, it can be read as writing as therapy.
That’s not to take anything away from this well-crafted, provocative first novel. Christel, who’s writing her own story throughout the book, says, ‘I am afraid. In case what I write is not any good and I will be ashamed and then my hopes and dreams will be destroyed.”
I imagine Warner was afraid but what she’s written is very good indeed and she should be proud of having the courage to tell such a story. It offers insights into the lives of those traumatised by war and, as Warner makes clear, that’s not just those who were there at the time. By extension, it prompts fresh thinking about New Zealand’s own past while remaining a deeply personal story.
They say universality lies in the specifics and that’s true here. The Sound of Breaking Glass could well have readers questioning what, from their own lives, they need to make peace with.