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The Last Thread
Michaelis is four when they first move to Australia, leaving behind the cold and the snow and the mud, the flat grey landscape, his father, his mother’s family, and everything he has ever known.
He is seven when they pack up again and go home, nine when they return to Australia. When you are used to it, leaving is the easiest thing in the world—and where the sea is warm and the days linger, it is easier to forget.
But his stepfather is a bully, and the absence of his real father masks a painful truth. Before long, Michaelis learns that no matter how far you go, your past always follows you, trailing questions in its wake.
Beginning with memory’s first fragments, The Last Thread traces a boy’s journey into adulthood against a backdrop of family secrets, betrayals and unhealed wounds.
Michael Sala was born in the Netherlands in 1975 to a Greek father and a Dutch mother, and first came to Australia in the 1980s. He lives in Newcastle. His critically acclaimed debut, The Last Thread, won the 2013 NSW Premier's Award for New Writing and was the regional winner (Pacific) of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.
‘Michael Sala has a rare gift: in prose that takes your breath away, he tells a story of heart-rending sorrow without a trace of sentimentality.’ Raimond Gaita
‘A confronting and compelling story of a family. Sala captures perfectly the puzzled silence of the uncomprehending child in a narrative swollen with unspoken secrets.’ Debra Adelaide
‘A gutsy, moving, beautifully wrought and utterly compelling work.’ Readings Monthly
‘There is so much to praise about this book. Michael Sala’s prose is clear and unadorned, the setting exquisitely rendered, but it is his characters—all of them flawed and complex and deeply, deeply human—who will stay with me for a very long time. I would defy anyone to read this story and remain unmoved. The Restorer is an incredibly powerful novel and, I believe, an important one.’ Hannah Kent on The Restorer
168 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2012
11 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Michael Sala
11 books20 followersMichael Sala was born and spent much of his childhood in Holland and now lives in Newcastle, where he is currently teaching and completing a PhD. He was shortlisted for the Vogel Literary Award in 2007 and received an ASA mentorship in the same year. His stories have recently appeared in HEAT, and in the Allen & Unwin anthology Brothers and Sisters.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 2, 2021
Upon finishing The Last Thread, I now have even more respect for Michael Sala. He must have had immense self-control to survive the experiences he went through!!
While reading about his childhood all I really wanted to do was hold young Michael and tell him what a very good boy he is, and that he is loved.😢 I think it was something he really needed to hear.
Difficult though it was to read this book, it could not have been easy for Sala to write it. To dredge up all his early memories to be re-lived must have been nearly soul-crushing. In the end, I hope it was cathartic for him. I hope he was literally able to "close the book" on that painful period and move on to happier times.
But I don't want to leave you with the impression that this was just a very sad story. NOT AT ALL! It was oddly a very readable book and one that was frequently really funny! It was so well-written I didn't want to put it down and could have read it all in one sitting! This is a book I would recommend without question. I'd also recommend you pick up Sala's other book The Restorer. It was truly one of the very best books I've read! He's a very talented author and I hope he publishes another book soon!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5 stars)
While reading about his childhood all I really wanted to do was hold young Michael and tell him what a very good boy he is, and that he is loved.😢 I think it was something he really needed to hear.
Difficult though it was to read this book, it could not have been easy for Sala to write it. To dredge up all his early memories to be re-lived must have been nearly soul-crushing. In the end, I hope it was cathartic for him. I hope he was literally able to "close the book" on that painful period and move on to happier times.
But I don't want to leave you with the impression that this was just a very sad story. NOT AT ALL! It was oddly a very readable book and one that was frequently really funny! It was so well-written I didn't want to put it down and could have read it all in one sitting! This is a book I would recommend without question. I'd also recommend you pick up Sala's other book The Restorer. It was truly one of the very best books I've read! He's a very talented author and I hope he publishes another book soon!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5 stars)
April 26, 2018
Michael Sala is an exceptional writer, and this book is autobigraphical about his growing up mostly in Newcastle NSW with a violent and abusive stepfather. It is written prior to 'The Restorer', which is one of the best written books ever, but honest and hard hitting. Wonderful stuff. Recommended, even though not nearly as good as his second novel. but there weren't enough stars for that one.
October 28, 2014
I won my copy of this book in a competition for National Year of Reading in the local Star Newspaper:)
The blurb says ‘...Michael Sala’s fascinating life in fiction’. It came across to me as an autobiography of Michael’s life. It is disjointed at times, but extremely moving, harrowing yet secretive.
The story of Michaelis, his brother Constantinos, their mother, and step-father Dirk, and their lives during the 1980’s when they lived in and around Newcastle, NSW, involves the continual beatings by their hated step-father, the coldness of Con, and how, even though Michael looked up to his brother, he also feared him. Their mother, and her inability to be strong for her children, their continual moving from one house to another, then one city to another, makes Michael and Con’s childhoods extremely difficult. Con had no fear, he would go out into Newcastle Harbour, spear-fishing, usually bringing home 3 or 4 beautiful silver fish each time. Michael would follow him, terrified of the ocean, the possibility of sharks, but afraid to be sneered at by Con.
Their Greek father, back in Holland, and totally estranged from the family, had dark secrets, many of which Michael didn’t find out until he was almost an adult. When they travelled back to Holland, to visit his mother’s family, the bitterness was palpable, and they didn’t stay long. Michael felt uncomfortable around his family, and became a loner.
This is the story of a family with many secrets, and the silence of a child filled with questions that he cannot ask. As confronting and compelling as this tale is, it is a beautifully written debut, and definitely worthy of a read.
The blurb says ‘...Michael Sala’s fascinating life in fiction’. It came across to me as an autobiography of Michael’s life. It is disjointed at times, but extremely moving, harrowing yet secretive.
The story of Michaelis, his brother Constantinos, their mother, and step-father Dirk, and their lives during the 1980’s when they lived in and around Newcastle, NSW, involves the continual beatings by their hated step-father, the coldness of Con, and how, even though Michael looked up to his brother, he also feared him. Their mother, and her inability to be strong for her children, their continual moving from one house to another, then one city to another, makes Michael and Con’s childhoods extremely difficult. Con had no fear, he would go out into Newcastle Harbour, spear-fishing, usually bringing home 3 or 4 beautiful silver fish each time. Michael would follow him, terrified of the ocean, the possibility of sharks, but afraid to be sneered at by Con.
Their Greek father, back in Holland, and totally estranged from the family, had dark secrets, many of which Michael didn’t find out until he was almost an adult. When they travelled back to Holland, to visit his mother’s family, the bitterness was palpable, and they didn’t stay long. Michael felt uncomfortable around his family, and became a loner.
This is the story of a family with many secrets, and the silence of a child filled with questions that he cannot ask. As confronting and compelling as this tale is, it is a beautifully written debut, and definitely worthy of a read.
October 27, 2013
This was an amazing debut novel. Highly recommend.
November 17, 2023
This debut autobiographical novel is an amazingly, sparingly written description of a peripatetic childhood. The young Michaelis’s father is of Greek ancestry. Michael, as be becomes, has vague memory of his early years with his older brother Constantine in The Netherlands where they were both born. His mother leaves for Australia with her two boys and their step father for Newcastle NSW. The insidious threat of a violent man is constantly present in the toxic masculinity way of Tim Winton’s writing.
It is not self-pitying - it is reality. The family is frequently on the move, to different houses, to Bribie Island near Brisbane Queensland, then back to The Netherlands and returning again to Newcastle. The first section has a third person narrator and the second written in the author’s own voice. Some these latter parts seemed a bit disorganised, going backwards and forwards in time. On reflection, this is the gathering of The Last Thread of early life in order to move on (very successfully) from a very challenging past to the present time.
These themes are reflected in the author’s subsequent The Restorer, a book that has stayed with me over the two years since it was read. The second text is much more coherent showing the development of Michael Sala’s empathic, contemporary and thoughtful prose. It has the same rawness moving from direct autobiography, to a story reflective of his reality.
Both books provide wonderful details of life in Newcastle in the 1980’s. This is particularly relevant for those who know and love this capital of the Hunter region, which has moved from its industrial ‘Steel City’ roots to now being a thriving and physically beautiful metropolis. I look forward to more from this skilled and very satisfying author.
It is not self-pitying - it is reality. The family is frequently on the move, to different houses, to Bribie Island near Brisbane Queensland, then back to The Netherlands and returning again to Newcastle. The first section has a third person narrator and the second written in the author’s own voice. Some these latter parts seemed a bit disorganised, going backwards and forwards in time. On reflection, this is the gathering of The Last Thread of early life in order to move on (very successfully) from a very challenging past to the present time.
These themes are reflected in the author’s subsequent The Restorer, a book that has stayed with me over the two years since it was read. The second text is much more coherent showing the development of Michael Sala’s empathic, contemporary and thoughtful prose. It has the same rawness moving from direct autobiography, to a story reflective of his reality.
Both books provide wonderful details of life in Newcastle in the 1980’s. This is particularly relevant for those who know and love this capital of the Hunter region, which has moved from its industrial ‘Steel City’ roots to now being a thriving and physically beautiful metropolis. I look forward to more from this skilled and very satisfying author.
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February 22, 2016The opening of Michael Sala’s The Last Thread is both intimate and intense. The reader is drawn directly into young Michaelis’s experience: “Living room swims in light and noise. The shh from the speakers sounds like rain, so loud you can’t hear the drops.” This sensual immediacy continues through the book, even as the boy, who both is and isn’t the author, grows, and even through the distancing effect of third person. The Last Thread is a fictionalised memoir. Of course all memoir has a degree of fictionalisation. The writing always comes from a particular perspective, taking on a particular perception, through the hazy lens of of memory by virtue of choices and omissions. In the case of The Last Thread, despite the use of real names and real settings, Sala creates a story that is driven by a clear narrative arc, whose plot is developed through a series of novelistic ‘what if’ questions.
One of the main questions that forms a theme throughout the novel is whether we can escape our genetic inheritance. Are the sins of the parent really visited upon the children? This is a motif that is repeated in different contexts, and forms a scaffold that continues even when the book changes from third person to first in the second half. Right from the start, we hear young Michaelis’s father Phytos say ‘One day, you’ll have a face like this.’ It’s like the blessing from the excluded evil fairy. Phytos is handsome, but he’s also the abuser that Michaelis and his family leave their home country of the Netherlands to escape. His abuse isn’t the only evil secret the family carry with them to Australia. Sala’s mother Nici brings along the pain that she endured at the hands of her own mother - a cold anti-semite, her sisters’ cruelties, and a new partner who is also abusive. There are layers upon layers of anger and pain that come along for the ride, often inchoate in young Michaelis’s mind. The Last Thread presents an unravelling of some of that pain, not only so that it will stop resurfacing, but also as a way of healing through art.
There is also something of a bildungsroman about The Last Thread. It’s a coming of age story that presents a portrait of the artist: a story of all those moments that come together to form a literary perspective. Though it doesn’t try to be self-consciously literary in that respect – the narrative is more or less linear and straightforward and the story moves along quickly, young Michaelis’ perspective travels between perception and language:
There is the tension between Michaelis’s native language and his adopted one. His mother talks of Gezellig or the warmth of indoors/home/conviviality. There is Echt wear or really true, or the abusive stepfather Dirk’s continuous “Verdomme” or dammit. These words are anchors to the past but they’re also words that increasingly become foreign to Michaelis – in terms of the promise they might hold, as in the case of Gezellig, or the threat that undermines him, as in the case of Verdomme. The migrant begins to reconstruct a fresh language out of an initial aphasia, where “all of his words are useless”. Later the newness comes from an attempt to understand the true meanings behind common phrases like “out of the frying pain, into the fire”, or the silence that grows between Michaelis and his mum. This is the writer’s job – to reconstruct language so that it creates a world.
Above all, there is the awakening awareness of beauty, in observations that suffuse the book in poetic richness:
Throughout the novel, descriptions are lush and filled with a childlike wonder of discovery. Newcastle is a beautifully drawn city. It’s not always bucolic, but always there is a sense of warmth, as if the city, once strange, was now a true place of Gezellig. This is emphasised by the switch to first person in the second part of the book. Michaelis becomes Michael and struggles with adulthood: love, loss, work, raising a family, and freeing himself from the demons of his past that resurface in anger, in alcoholism, and in a sense of isolation. Life isn’t always a linear path though, and there is a strong though subtle meta-fictional aspect to this story that reminds us we are always working towards a broader meaning making than a single story might provide. It’s here that the themes re-emerge, along with questions about genetic inheritance, about how we make and remake ourselves, how meaning is created, and the role of language and love in all of its forms. The Last Thread is about all of those threads and more. It’s a beautifully written, delicate story that moves beyond the sadness and pain of its subject matter to find a kind of solace, joy and permanent beauty.
One of the main questions that forms a theme throughout the novel is whether we can escape our genetic inheritance. Are the sins of the parent really visited upon the children? This is a motif that is repeated in different contexts, and forms a scaffold that continues even when the book changes from third person to first in the second half. Right from the start, we hear young Michaelis’s father Phytos say ‘One day, you’ll have a face like this.’ It’s like the blessing from the excluded evil fairy. Phytos is handsome, but he’s also the abuser that Michaelis and his family leave their home country of the Netherlands to escape. His abuse isn’t the only evil secret the family carry with them to Australia. Sala’s mother Nici brings along the pain that she endured at the hands of her own mother - a cold anti-semite, her sisters’ cruelties, and a new partner who is also abusive. There are layers upon layers of anger and pain that come along for the ride, often inchoate in young Michaelis’s mind. The Last Thread presents an unravelling of some of that pain, not only so that it will stop resurfacing, but also as a way of healing through art.
There is also something of a bildungsroman about The Last Thread. It’s a coming of age story that presents a portrait of the artist: a story of all those moments that come together to form a literary perspective. Though it doesn’t try to be self-consciously literary in that respect – the narrative is more or less linear and straightforward and the story moves along quickly, young Michaelis’ perspective travels between perception and language:
Mum will only say Dad’s name on the pone to Moessie and to her sister. Phytos, Phytos, Phytos. This is Dad’s other name. Repeat it under your breath as you walk along in the afternoon sun, and see if the meaning changes. (46)
There is the tension between Michaelis’s native language and his adopted one. His mother talks of Gezellig or the warmth of indoors/home/conviviality. There is Echt wear or really true, or the abusive stepfather Dirk’s continuous “Verdomme” or dammit. These words are anchors to the past but they’re also words that increasingly become foreign to Michaelis – in terms of the promise they might hold, as in the case of Gezellig, or the threat that undermines him, as in the case of Verdomme. The migrant begins to reconstruct a fresh language out of an initial aphasia, where “all of his words are useless”. Later the newness comes from an attempt to understand the true meanings behind common phrases like “out of the frying pain, into the fire”, or the silence that grows between Michaelis and his mum. This is the writer’s job – to reconstruct language so that it creates a world.
Above all, there is the awakening awareness of beauty, in observations that suffuse the book in poetic richness:
Everything on Bridie Island broods. The long, straight roads boil with heat. Tar and sand scald and toughen the soles of Michaelis’s feet. The brown, leathery corpses of toads sit on the roads baking in the sun, dried blood around them. You can see storms coming in from the sea. The wter is flat. There are waves on the other side of the island, but you forget they even exist. Blue-grey clouds spill into the horizon and tighten with convulsions of light and throbbing booms of thunder. (66-67)
Throughout the novel, descriptions are lush and filled with a childlike wonder of discovery. Newcastle is a beautifully drawn city. It’s not always bucolic, but always there is a sense of warmth, as if the city, once strange, was now a true place of Gezellig. This is emphasised by the switch to first person in the second part of the book. Michaelis becomes Michael and struggles with adulthood: love, loss, work, raising a family, and freeing himself from the demons of his past that resurface in anger, in alcoholism, and in a sense of isolation. Life isn’t always a linear path though, and there is a strong though subtle meta-fictional aspect to this story that reminds us we are always working towards a broader meaning making than a single story might provide. It’s here that the themes re-emerge, along with questions about genetic inheritance, about how we make and remake ourselves, how meaning is created, and the role of language and love in all of its forms. The Last Thread is about all of those threads and more. It’s a beautifully written, delicate story that moves beyond the sadness and pain of its subject matter to find a kind of solace, joy and permanent beauty.
June 30, 2015
The Last Thread is the author's account of how his life was shaped by his mother and the rotations of men that she settled down with at various periods. First came his actual father, a congenial charmer of dubious sexuality. Then his step-father, a physically violent presence throughout childhood. Then an emotionally abusive man that his mother shacks up with later in life.
I'm not sure that I have too much to say about this book. I've been on a sci-fi/fantasy odyssey lately, and switching to this very personal biography was a little jarring at first - the pace and tone were a little confronting. It didn't take long to start appreciating it though. It's well-written, and nicely paced once you settle into its slower rhythm.
The biggest downside for me though was that there I didn't really get the point to it. I love being given the opportunity to step into someone else's shoes in a novel and experience their story. Whilst The Last Thread allowed me to do this, Sala's life experience didn't punch me in the guts. There was enough drama and insight to make it very readable, but not enough to make me go 'wow'.
I'm not sure that I have too much to say about this book. I've been on a sci-fi/fantasy odyssey lately, and switching to this very personal biography was a little jarring at first - the pace and tone were a little confronting. It didn't take long to start appreciating it though. It's well-written, and nicely paced once you settle into its slower rhythm.
The biggest downside for me though was that there I didn't really get the point to it. I love being given the opportunity to step into someone else's shoes in a novel and experience their story. Whilst The Last Thread allowed me to do this, Sala's life experience didn't punch me in the guts. There was enough drama and insight to make it very readable, but not enough to make me go 'wow'.
July 14, 2017
This review may be slightly biased, as Michael was a teacher of mine at university. But this book is stunningly beautiful. I feel connected to this book on an Australian level, and as a person who spent the majority of their childhood moving around. Although I didn't go from country to country, I did spend my formative years in four states of Australia. No family is perfect, and Michael exhibits this perfectly. His mother is probably the most interesting character for me, and his brother and father fascinate me. It was strange to go back to class after reading it over a weekend and look at this man who went through such a tumultuous childhood.
Excellent debut from an excellent teacher :P
Excellent debut from an excellent teacher :P
August 24, 2014
This was a terrific first novel by a new Australian writer. He has written a fictionalised account of his life, swapping from first to third person with great effect. There isn't much action in the narrative, but this is compensated by emotionally confronting issues of emotion abuse, physical abuse, parenting, family secrets and the "hold" of the past. I found it quite gripping and read it in two sessions (including a three hour plane flight). If this book is a sign of what this author can produce, then I will eagerly await his next one.
May 1, 2012
Great writing, real traction on the page, an unflinching rendition of an unhappy childhood
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April 23, 2013An extended short story
August 9, 2013
I didn't like it. Told from the point of view of a child, in the present tense, it touched on issues but never got into them. Very unsatisfying read for me. A miss.
October 1, 2013
Moving and haunting.
October 31, 2014
Really enjoyed this book as the writer has truly captured the dynamics of family life. I enjoyed the Dutch connection as I had Dutch parents but my upbringing was more positive than Mich.
April 17, 2017
3.5 stars. I read Sala's second novel, The Restorer, before reading this, his first novel. And you can certainly see how much he has matured as a writer. This "novel" is a thinly veiled auto-biography. It is a bit disjointed and has no real narrative arc, but I couldn't help but feel frightened for the little boy that he was, and be saddened by the violence that he had to endure. I think Sala tries very hard to understand his mother's decisions and elicit sympathy for her, but I really just wanted to slap her on many occasions. Again, like The Restorer, Newcastle is a character in this novel, although I don't think Newcastle Tourism will thank him!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews