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Velocity : A Memoir
VELOCITY tells the moving, painful but often hilarious story of Mandy Sayer's childhood and adolescence, a life lived on the edges - of society, of poverty, of certainty, of love.
Filled with beautifully realised descriptions of life seen through a child's eyes - a child who gradually comes to realise her adored parents are all too tragically flawed and broken. Mandy is immersed in a world of smoky jazz bars, steamy beer gardens and lino-floored dosshouses, while vainly trying to make sense of the shambolic lifestyle of her alcoholic parents.
Conceived after her jazz musician father swallowed a block of hash at a party, a young Mandy soon comes to realise that nothing in her world stays the same for long. Her father is prone to perplexing vanishing acts: absent for months at a time, he arrives on the doorstep to greet his delighted daughter with great affection, but no explanations. Meanwhile, her mother pursues fruitless relationships with other men while her father reacts with seeming indifference. Mandy and her mother frequently move house so her mother can take on housekeeping jobs, leaving Mandy struggling to make lasting friendships and longing for stability. She feels particularly vulnerable when her mother becomes involved with Hakkin, a deeply aggressive man whose violent and erratic outbursts are not reserved only for Mandy's mother.
But there are many moments in life which bring Mandy joy and offer refuge: times when she feels assured of the love and approval of her parents: when she immerses herself in poetry, acting and music, and surrounds herself with those who share her passions.
Velocity packs the emotional impact of 'Angela's Ashes' with the surreal humour and razor-sharp observations of 'Running with scissors'. Sayer brings into focus those moments when the child's world and the adult world intersect, when illusions are shattered and understanding begins. Unflinchingly honest, startlingly brave and written with a clear-eyed, lyrical grace, 'Velocity' is an ultimately uplifting story of struggle and faith against frightening odds.
Filled with beautifully realised descriptions of life seen through a child's eyes - a child who gradually comes to realise her adored parents are all too tragically flawed and broken. Mandy is immersed in a world of smoky jazz bars, steamy beer gardens and lino-floored dosshouses, while vainly trying to make sense of the shambolic lifestyle of her alcoholic parents.
Conceived after her jazz musician father swallowed a block of hash at a party, a young Mandy soon comes to realise that nothing in her world stays the same for long. Her father is prone to perplexing vanishing acts: absent for months at a time, he arrives on the doorstep to greet his delighted daughter with great affection, but no explanations. Meanwhile, her mother pursues fruitless relationships with other men while her father reacts with seeming indifference. Mandy and her mother frequently move house so her mother can take on housekeeping jobs, leaving Mandy struggling to make lasting friendships and longing for stability. She feels particularly vulnerable when her mother becomes involved with Hakkin, a deeply aggressive man whose violent and erratic outbursts are not reserved only for Mandy's mother.
But there are many moments in life which bring Mandy joy and offer refuge: times when she feels assured of the love and approval of her parents: when she immerses herself in poetry, acting and music, and surrounds herself with those who share her passions.
Velocity packs the emotional impact of 'Angela's Ashes' with the surreal humour and razor-sharp observations of 'Running with scissors'. Sayer brings into focus those moments when the child's world and the adult world intersect, when illusions are shattered and understanding begins. Unflinchingly honest, startlingly brave and written with a clear-eyed, lyrical grace, 'Velocity' is an ultimately uplifting story of struggle and faith against frightening odds.
303 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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90 people want to read
About the author
Mandy Sayer
32 books26 followersMandy Sayer is an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer. Her most recent book, Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History, has just been published by New South Press.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 16, 2020
This book has grabbed my attention from start to finish. I admire the author. I sense both creativity and strength in her character. I appreciate how she tells her life story. She expresses herself clearly and without self-pity. This memoir, one of three, shows us the early years of her life--where she came from, what she was given and what she had to conquer.
Mandy Sayer was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1963. She is the fourth of four children of which one died as an infant. A fifth child will be born to her mother. Her father Gerry, a bohemian drummer and cymbalist lives for his music--jazz. It’s more important to him than anything else. He loves his kids and he loves his wife, but nothing, not anything comes before his music. He has a harelip and a cleft palate. This is scarcely mentioned. What you feel and come to fully understand is the importance of music to him. Music, creativity and invention are in his blood, in his bones. He performs better when on hash, so he uses hash. His wife, Betty, Mandy’s mother, it’s up to her to take care of the kids. She wanted to marry. She wanted the kids. Not him. Money is scarce. Gerry’s always gone. Should they have married? Probably not, but they did, and here is what happened.
Gerry has a car accident; he drove into a telegraph pole. It was close that he died, but he survived. Told he would never walk again, let alone play drums again, his spirit took a hard beating. It took him years until he could play again. What happened during these years is what is shown here. Mandy, being the youngest of the three surviving siblings, lived with her mother. By the age of ten, her parents had separated. Why life turned sour, why Betty turned to drink, why she felt a need to seek out other men is perceived as being almost inevitable. And the kids, how is it for them? What is drawn is reality, as Mandy sees it looking back on the early years of her life. This book takes readers through 1980, the formative years of her childhood, her pubescence, coming-of-age and growing self-awareness.
From a young age Mandy wanted to write. Creativity, music and dance are as much in her blood as in her father’s. All too often memoirs are written not for readers but for the authors themselves, as a means of healing their souls. Many such authors lack the creative ability necessary for good writing. Mandy Sayer’s book does not fall into this category. It is written for us and it is written with panache. The author went on to take courses in creative writing. Her writing is straightforward, simple and clear. She gives you what you need to know, and then stops……your imagination fills in what is not there. There is strength and power in the prose.
Mandy’s creativity and love of life is played out against dysfunctional family relationships and domestic violence. The violence described in this book will set your heart pounding. Mother and daughter come to reside in safe-homes for battered women. Mandy has two fears. Will her mother return to her lover, as she has done in the past, despite the many times he has come close to killing her?! Or, will this man find them again? What you read is frightening. You jump in your seat, and you know that which you are reading is true. This has happened! It is not fiction! Restraining orders have little value when that man is pounding on your door or circling, circling, circling around your home.
When you put this book down you want to know what will happen next in Mandy’s life. I know she will go to New York with her father. I know she will become a street performer. She will tap dance and her father will be banging away on his drums. I know already the outline, but I want to know the details. The creative energy of father and daughter together is a joy to observe.
Casey Withoos narrates the audiobook very well. She has an Australian accent, but it is not heavy. Every word is clear. She pauses at all the right places. She reads in a deadpan manner that fits the prose. Four stars for the narration. I am very happy that she will be reading the next two books of the three written by Mandy, about Mandy, for us.
It is how the memoir is written that makes it so very good. Through this book I have experienced a life far from my own. Both the gifts given her and the hardships endured are shown.
********************
*Velocity: A Memoir 4 stars
*Dreamtime Alice 4 stars
*The Poet's Wife currently reading
In the last book we read of Mandy’s marriage to the black poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa.
Mandy Sayer was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1963. She is the fourth of four children of which one died as an infant. A fifth child will be born to her mother. Her father Gerry, a bohemian drummer and cymbalist lives for his music--jazz. It’s more important to him than anything else. He loves his kids and he loves his wife, but nothing, not anything comes before his music. He has a harelip and a cleft palate. This is scarcely mentioned. What you feel and come to fully understand is the importance of music to him. Music, creativity and invention are in his blood, in his bones. He performs better when on hash, so he uses hash. His wife, Betty, Mandy’s mother, it’s up to her to take care of the kids. She wanted to marry. She wanted the kids. Not him. Money is scarce. Gerry’s always gone. Should they have married? Probably not, but they did, and here is what happened.
Gerry has a car accident; he drove into a telegraph pole. It was close that he died, but he survived. Told he would never walk again, let alone play drums again, his spirit took a hard beating. It took him years until he could play again. What happened during these years is what is shown here. Mandy, being the youngest of the three surviving siblings, lived with her mother. By the age of ten, her parents had separated. Why life turned sour, why Betty turned to drink, why she felt a need to seek out other men is perceived as being almost inevitable. And the kids, how is it for them? What is drawn is reality, as Mandy sees it looking back on the early years of her life. This book takes readers through 1980, the formative years of her childhood, her pubescence, coming-of-age and growing self-awareness.
From a young age Mandy wanted to write. Creativity, music and dance are as much in her blood as in her father’s. All too often memoirs are written not for readers but for the authors themselves, as a means of healing their souls. Many such authors lack the creative ability necessary for good writing. Mandy Sayer’s book does not fall into this category. It is written for us and it is written with panache. The author went on to take courses in creative writing. Her writing is straightforward, simple and clear. She gives you what you need to know, and then stops……your imagination fills in what is not there. There is strength and power in the prose.
Mandy’s creativity and love of life is played out against dysfunctional family relationships and domestic violence. The violence described in this book will set your heart pounding. Mother and daughter come to reside in safe-homes for battered women. Mandy has two fears. Will her mother return to her lover, as she has done in the past, despite the many times he has come close to killing her?! Or, will this man find them again? What you read is frightening. You jump in your seat, and you know that which you are reading is true. This has happened! It is not fiction! Restraining orders have little value when that man is pounding on your door or circling, circling, circling around your home.
When you put this book down you want to know what will happen next in Mandy’s life. I know she will go to New York with her father. I know she will become a street performer. She will tap dance and her father will be banging away on his drums. I know already the outline, but I want to know the details. The creative energy of father and daughter together is a joy to observe.
Casey Withoos narrates the audiobook very well. She has an Australian accent, but it is not heavy. Every word is clear. She pauses at all the right places. She reads in a deadpan manner that fits the prose. Four stars for the narration. I am very happy that she will be reading the next two books of the three written by Mandy, about Mandy, for us.
It is how the memoir is written that makes it so very good. Through this book I have experienced a life far from my own. Both the gifts given her and the hardships endured are shown.
********************
*Velocity: A Memoir 4 stars
*Dreamtime Alice 4 stars
*The Poet's Wife currently reading
In the last book we read of Mandy’s marriage to the black poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa.
May 11, 2021
‘I was conceived in May 1962, roughly an hour after my father swallowed a block of hash at a party of jazz musicians.’
Mandy Sayer was born in 1963, and this is a memoir of her life up until the time she travelled to America with her father, Gerry Sayer. That part of her life is covered in her first memoir, ‘Dreamtime Alice’, which I have not yet read.
This is a difficult memoir to read, not because of the writing, which is excellent, but because of the content. Gerry and Betty, Mandy’s parents, lived a life largely unfettered by usual societal restraints. Gerry pursued his dream as a jazz drummer, while Betty retreated into alcohol when it became clear that her dreams would not be realised. The youngest of three surviving children born to Gerry and Betty, Mandy learned how to accept, observe, and survive.
The marriage Betty wanted (but Gerry did not) failed. Mandy stayed with her mother, changed school frequently, watches hr mother fall into and out of unsatisfying and often violent relationships, and lives through three of her mother’s suicide attempts. But the worst of it is Betty’s relationship with Hakkim: a violent, paranoid younger man who makes their lives an utter misery. Betty has a child with Hakkim, and life becomes even more complicated.
Ms Sayer is a child through the events she describes, and much of her description is that matter of fact way in which children describe what has happened without the filters imposed by age and awareness. It makes for heartbreaking reading (for me, reading as an adult and parent) but it demonstrates resilience.
I found this a moving account, filled with both joy and pain, a struggle against daunting challenges, and will seek out Ms Sayer’s other memoirs: ‘Dreamtime Alice’ and ‘The Poet’s Wife’.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Mandy Sayer was born in 1963, and this is a memoir of her life up until the time she travelled to America with her father, Gerry Sayer. That part of her life is covered in her first memoir, ‘Dreamtime Alice’, which I have not yet read.
This is a difficult memoir to read, not because of the writing, which is excellent, but because of the content. Gerry and Betty, Mandy’s parents, lived a life largely unfettered by usual societal restraints. Gerry pursued his dream as a jazz drummer, while Betty retreated into alcohol when it became clear that her dreams would not be realised. The youngest of three surviving children born to Gerry and Betty, Mandy learned how to accept, observe, and survive.
The marriage Betty wanted (but Gerry did not) failed. Mandy stayed with her mother, changed school frequently, watches hr mother fall into and out of unsatisfying and often violent relationships, and lives through three of her mother’s suicide attempts. But the worst of it is Betty’s relationship with Hakkim: a violent, paranoid younger man who makes their lives an utter misery. Betty has a child with Hakkim, and life becomes even more complicated.
Ms Sayer is a child through the events she describes, and much of her description is that matter of fact way in which children describe what has happened without the filters imposed by age and awareness. It makes for heartbreaking reading (for me, reading as an adult and parent) but it demonstrates resilience.
I found this a moving account, filled with both joy and pain, a struggle against daunting challenges, and will seek out Ms Sayer’s other memoirs: ‘Dreamtime Alice’ and ‘The Poet’s Wife’.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
October 19, 2017
I'm not surprised that Mandy Sayer has written Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History because her childhood was certainly one where she moved around into and out of various refuges, public housing, squats, couches, and the occasional rental. Her life leading to adulthood was full of challenges but she tells her story openly, with humour but mostly with love and respect for her troubled mother and talented but childish-musician father.
She stuck with her mother when the rest of the family gradually gave up on her. She went to a lot of schools, was bullied, lonely but found a love of writing which kept her sane. Her mother attracted men with issues and they experienced abuse, poverty, mental illness, alcoholism and constant disappointments.
This is not a memoir full of wisdom, it has many lessons about the fragility of men but in the end it tells of one amazing journey of growing up and coming out with humour and hope.
She stuck with her mother when the rest of the family gradually gave up on her. She went to a lot of schools, was bullied, lonely but found a love of writing which kept her sane. Her mother attracted men with issues and they experienced abuse, poverty, mental illness, alcoholism and constant disappointments.
This is not a memoir full of wisdom, it has many lessons about the fragility of men but in the end it tells of one amazing journey of growing up and coming out with humour and hope.
March 23, 2014
Terrific book funny sad always a page turner but how one earth did Sayer survive her childhood? One insight I did gain from this book is that perhaps the reason a lot of artists may come from difficult and rootless childhoods is that they learn in this way to get used to the uncertainty, poverty and need for resilience of life as an artist. Discuss.
June 24, 2010
This book affected me tremendously. I grew up in Australia and thought I had it tough until I read this book. My heart breaks for the author's terrible start. Astonished that her father has publicly admitted it's all true. As broken as her beginnings were, Sayer is a gifted, glorious storyteller.
I am simply in awe.
I am simply in awe.
February 16, 2024
As always, I think narrative and memoir have enormous value and are enjoyable, digestible reads. I think velocity was special because Sayer managed to capture the voice of her childhood allowing us to better understand what it is like to experience incredibly challenging and ‘adult’ things without warning and subsequently try to make sense of them. She communicated many complex and and varied emotional states with super simple language
January 3, 2011
4.5 stars for this one. I've just reread it again and the simplicity and power in Mandy Sayer's writing is superb. It's probably one of the best memoirs I've read in the past ten years. The child's perspective, which could have easily been gimmicky, is skilfully integrated. An impressive work and well-deserving of its awards.
June 4, 2019
What a great story, tough childhood compared to most kids. After her parents separation she was always striving for the best outcome for her mum, herself and her siblings.
Colourful characters, good and bad, are scattered throughout providing storylines that capture perfectly the moments that have shaped her resilience and love for the crazy world around her.
In finding herself she was able to see that it was her wonderful, lasting, loving relationship with her music mad dad that in the end was what made her truly happy.
Colourful characters, good and bad, are scattered throughout providing storylines that capture perfectly the moments that have shaped her resilience and love for the crazy world around her.
In finding herself she was able to see that it was her wonderful, lasting, loving relationship with her music mad dad that in the end was what made her truly happy.
Read
April 20, 2024Gosh what a story Her spirit and love for her family and how she stood by them during the difficult times of her childhood certainly impacts in her book
November 29, 2016
I read Dreamtime Alice when it first came out in the 1990s. That book focused on Mandy's time with her father travelling and performing in the US. I don't have a strong recollection of that book from the time, other than to say I enjoyed the bohemian tale. Velocity is Mandy's childhood and how she got to the point of travelling with her father. Disrupted schooling, her parent's marital chaos, family disintegration, her mother's drinking and years spent living with her mother and her mother's violent partner before fleeing to Melbourne to escape the violence. The book culminates in Mandy reconnecting with her father and returning to Sydney. Mandy really captures the spirit of the times as she traverses the late 1960s to the 1980s, including the burgeoning women's movement, integral to the escape from family violence. A real homage to resilience and taking charge of one's own destiny. My only tiny criticism is how suddenly the book ends. An engrossing book that is well worth having a look at.
May 30, 2014
This book fairly gallops along with its story. It is very readable, well-written and you can can read it in great gulps. I think the author's resilience after such a traumatic childhood is amazing. I did find some of it a wee bit hard to swallow tho; can a small child really be so self-aware and also so aware of what the adults around her are feeling and doing? She seemed to have very grown up ideas, and I wasn't sure how accurate a representation of her as a child this could be. Apart from that, it was an interesting insight into a poor and dysfunctional family, with an alcoholic slutty mother and a selfish, useless and mostly absent father. I really wanted to give that mother a kick in the behind!:). Fascinating and gripping.
June 24, 2015
As another reader mentioned, i'm unsure of how a young girl can recall so much of her childhood thoughts and feelings. Put that aside I was thoroughly entertained and interested in how Mandy's life would turn out.
I was raised in a middle class family in the UK, and have lived in Australia since the early 80's. I thought every other family lived like us so it was quite an eye opener to have an insight of the live of others less fortunate.
I was raised in a middle class family in the UK, and have lived in Australia since the early 80's. I thought every other family lived like us so it was quite an eye opener to have an insight of the live of others less fortunate.
December 18, 2016
I read this book for my Life Writing study at school and it was an engaging, supremely sad and fantastic read for it's genre. Whenever I picked it up it would submerge me into the story which was at times devastatingly difficult to read.
September 30, 2008
has something for everybody to relate to...
August 26, 2013
True story of a Sydney girl's childhood.. Great
July 19, 2014
Am I the only one who wasn't bowled over by this book?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews