Things Nobody Knows But Me by Amra Pajalic
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to listen to ARC of Things Nobody Knows But Me.
I enjoy listening to memoirs that are read by the author because it allows me to hear the emotion exactly as the writer intended it. So I was surprised that this book was flat at times. The narration didn’t have the emotional inflections I would have hoped from the person who had lived it. Billed as a love story from daughter to mother – I truly did not get that from the story.
This story is initially very engaging. I was not familiar with the author and so chose it based on the synopsis. I don’t think it is truly accurate in that this book was about way more than the mom’s mental illness. There are also dark themes of abuse and victimization that run through the story.
Memoirs, I recognize, are often not linear. But I think this book had isuses with flow. Because the author rarely used dates or ages it was often very confusing to know where she was in her story since it did jump back and forth. I do wish she had chosen a more linear format so that we could follow – especially her mother’s story. Details would pop up and I would find myself thinking “Wait, what?” For example, the discussion of her older sister which gets flung in late in the story and then never really gets explored. Or the mention of her mother’s first husband without tying up what ocurred in the relationship. Other aspects felt as though they were thrown in purely for shock value and did not add to the intimate portrait that the author was attempting to create.
Much of the “Things Nobody Knows But Me” is really a story about the author’s mom and her lived experiences. I did find the cultural differences between Australia and Yugoslavia/Bosnia to be very interesting and I was grateful for the anchoring in time when the author discussed Bill Clinton and the Bosnian war to help explain some of the cultural norms of the time.
Overall this is a well written, interesting story that has some issues with flow and organization that hamper the reader’s ability to follow and engage.
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