Life Of Stuff

by Susannah Walker

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shortlisted for the James Tait Black biograpy prize 2019 'This extraordinary, beautiful memoir gripped me from the first page.' Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other What do our possessions say about us? Why do we project such meaning onto them? Only after her mother’s death does Susannah Walker discover how much of a hoarder she had become. Over the following months, she has to sort through a dilapidated house filled to the brim with rubbish and treasures, in search of a woman she'd never really known or understood in life. This is her last chance to piece together her mother’s story and make sense of their troubled relationship. What emerges from the mess of scattered papers, discarded photographs and an extraordinary amount of stuff is the history of a sad and fractured family, haunted by dead children, divorce and alcohol. The Life of Stuff is a deeply personal exploration of mourning and the shoring up of possessions against the losses and griefs of life, which also raises universal questions about what makes us the people we are.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, History

384 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2018

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Damn, I should have read some more reviews of this thing before reading it. My fellow goodreaders were quite correct, this is a very annoying, egocentric, maundering, treacly, sentimentalised wallow and it goes on and on and on about family history and stuff like teapots, photo albums, vacuum cleaners, photo albums, family history, spoons, napkin rings, furniture, photo albums and photo albums.

Why I thought of reading this : we have a friend who we have gradually realised over the past year is a hoarder. There’s a point where collecting a lot of stuff tips over into actual hoarding, and it’s hard to admit. I have watched the youtube documentaries on the subject and seen at least one tv series but on the tv they always want to turn this decades-long gradual mental deterioration into a story with a happy ending : look! Here is your house after our cleanup crew and interior decorator and gardener fixed it up! What about that! See how it sparkles! No more rat droppings in the kitchen! A brand new life! Cue tears and hugs for the family members and high fives amongst the jolly helpers.

Life isn’t like that. I wanted more insight, how it goes when your own mother (as in this book) is a hoarder. So that’s why I thought it would be good, but it really wasn’t. Avoid.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note: stopped reading about halfway through.

This book feels like Walker's attempt to process/cope with the death of her mother.

Her mother, she discovers, had become a hoarder, and Walker tries to understand why while cleaning out her mother's house. She romanticizes the "indescribably sorrow" that must have led her mother to become a hoarder and connects the dots between objects that she finds in the house. There's a lot of conjecture, and some dismissal of existing research on hoarding because she thinks it doesn't describe her mother's case.

This, in and of itself, is all acceptable, or at least understandable. Unfortunately, at some points she starts drawing her conclusions out to all hoarders, which she doesn't know much about. She also focuses so much on her recreations of her mother's feelings that she glosses over her own, which I think are (a) more interesting and (b) things she actually knows about firsthand.

[Rosie Barron · Rating 2 out of 5]

After a promising start, I really struggled to finish this book. It felt like I was wading through treacle by the end and I was relieved when I could put it down - having taken a month’s break 2/3rds of the way through as I couldn’t face the author’s incredibly self centred approach to her mother’s life.

[Liz Fenwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still digesting this book...it's wonderful, heartbreaking and fascinating. If you've ever been faced with clearing after someone has died much of this book will resonate with you. Walker's mother was a hoarder but the book goes far beyond that when it looks at the 'power' of things. It's a compelling read. I read it in three sittings.

[Elizabeth Tai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to confess to having a certain fascination for hoarders. When I decided to move to Australia in 2012, I had to clear my apartment for renters. I was quite alarmed by the amount of things I had collected over the years - hundreds of books & DVDs, many of them I had not had the time to read or watch.

While I konmari-ed my stuff I would watch episodes of “Hoarders” in absolute horror/fascination/compassion.

What I saw in that series scared me into becoming a minimalist, methinks. Although I am far from the “33 pieces of items in my wardrobe” person, I have far, far less things now.

But why do people hoard? Could you end up as one?

These questions haunted Susannah Walker, who was left with the unpleasant task of clearing up her mother’s home after her death.

Her mum, Pat, spent her last years in a house so broken and filled with filth it should have been condemned. Yet, to the outside world, she appeared as a well-dressed woman who seemed in control of her life.

Thanks to reality shows like Hoarders, people who have this affliction are almost always viewed as freaks. Susannah, however, gives us an a compassionate and emotional insight into her mother’s life as she tries to understand what led her to slowly destroy a home she once so adored.

“These people become hoarders because they have suffered so much loss already that disposing of even a single object would be too hard to bear.”

In the end, theorised Susannah, her mother manifested the pain of her tragic life outwardly - in her stuff.

A must read.

[Zoe Obstkuchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Susannah Walker’s mother died she found herself having to clear her house, but could she find her mother as well?
What makes any normal person hoard, stuffing their home with, well, stuff? I knew I was going to find this fascinating and I read the majority of it in one go. Walker delves not only into her mother’s past but her own, that of many family members and the history of what appears to be a very modern phenomenon.
I had a great uncle who hoarded, eventually existing in his home of sixty years by moving only via tunnels through piles of newspapers. I remember my mother being horrified when I started keeping stones as apparently that was how he started. Indeed it can be shared by family members and although I still love stones (and can’t pass a beach without leaving with a handful secreted in my pockets) I haven’t succumbed to it yet.

[Kathrin Passig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich habe schon viele Bücher über Messieangelegenheiten gelesen, und ich lerne aus jedem wieder was Neues. Hier unter anderem, dass mich die Messietendenzen, die ich im Moment hinter mir gelassen habe, im Alter womöglich wieder einholen werden, und ich vorsorglich noch viel mehr Zeugs loswerden sollte.

Zu Beginn der zweiten Buchhälfte dachte ich "Ah, jetzt ist das eigentliche autobiografische Thema erschöpft und der Rest des Buchs wird mit der Zusammenfassung irgendwelcher Forschungs- und Googleergebnisse angefüllt, weil sich der Verlag eben eine bestimmte Seitenzahl wünscht." So war es dann aber gar nicht, und es kommt noch mal viel Interessantes.

[Isabel Khine · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Life of Stuff' is incredibly difficult to pin down. It is in part a philosophical treatise on death, mourning and guilt, but at the same time it charts the immensely personal journey that Walker goes on to understand how and, more importantly, why her mother's life became split between two disparate selves. From miscarriage to motherhood, Walker explores her (at first glance) seemingly matriarchal family history as a microcosm of larger, institutional issues that women faced in twentieth-century Britain.

Walker hones in on different aspects of her mother's life through focusing on specific objects that she finds whilst trying to clear away the years from the latter's long lived-in home. What follows is refreshingly honest confusion and anger. Her honesty is most poignant and lucid when she considers in depth her reliance on practicality and physical labour during the months after her mother's death. Far from self-pitying, Walker is wonderfully candid about her intense reliance on 'stuff'. She does not deny that she imbues things and inanimate objects with emotion and 'soul'. I have found her words to be a source of comfort in an age of Marie Kondo "sparking joy" and endless books on minimalism. The way that we mourn the loss of things bears a close resemblance to how we mourn the loss of loved ones; to lose both at the same time, especially when the things are meant to be emblematic of said loved one, can feel like an insurmountable hill to climb.

As the child of an older (and now-elderly) father, I felt a real kinship with Walker. It can sometimes be easier to communicate across generations through things rather than words, and perhaps I'll be a little less critical now of my father's hoarding of plastic cutlery and computer manuals from 30 years ago...

[Elinor Richter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein ähnlicher Ansatz wie beim eher ambivalenten Dokumentarfilm „Sieben Mulden und eine Leiche“.
Nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter sieht sich Susannah Walker unerwartet mit der Messiehölle ihrer Mutter konfrontiert. Durch Müll, Schimmel, Moder, Zerfall bahnt sie sich einen Weg bis zu dem, was ihr darunter/dazwischen über die Mutter, deren Leben und auch das der Vorfahren Auskunft geben kann. Hat mich sehr berührt, musste mich aber auch bemühen, es bis zu Ende zu lesen, weil es mir manchmal doch etwas redundant erschien, was aber eher von meiner Ungeduld zeugt und keinesfalls gegen das Buch spricht.
Ausführliche, aufschlussreiche Besprechung hier:
https://www.zeit.de/kultur/literatur/...

[Giovanna Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an ex-hoarder, and from family of hoarders (both parents) I found it interesting to read about someone else's experience - and an English perspective. (most writing on this comes from the US). I did feel that Walker (no relation) dwelt a little too much (indulgently) about her families issues & her feelings around them, however I found her exploration of the root of hoarding quite interesting. I liked how she focussed on one object a chapter, breaking it down (rather than the whole 'mess' which would and is overwhelming).

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a difficult read for me various reasons, chiefly, because I lost my own mother last year, and dementia took her from me before I could ask her about and write her history, I have her things but how can I decide what’s important to keep? I am a hoarder myself. Reading my truth in her story scared me. It made me confront my worst self, how objects and stuff represents love and comfort to me, and how barricading myself behind the hoard helps me keep people and life at bay. But I found hope in her story too. How she pieces together a family tree full of women like her, she is able to learn from their mistakes and hopefully break the chain of tragedy associated with their sorrow and loss, especially her own. I want my sister to read this so she may understand in a small way how my mind works, a mind so different to hers and yet forever and unbreakably linked. The sentence that will stay with me is ‘like any other hoarder, what I fear most is loss, but what I am scared of losing are my own memories’. I need things to preserve my memories , and that’s why the truth of this behaviour scared me so. A book that will stay with me.

[Sarah Peters · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is largely a journal of an unloved daughter clearing her mother derelict, cluttered home. I became impatient with the author - because this was a version of therapy or counselling really. There was research and contextual information, but... ugh.

Maybe the take away is this: British “stiff upper lip” in the face of childhood deaths and divorce are destructive! Stuff is a way to hold memories; and to fill a void. And, ultimately a privilege of relative wealth of industrialised nations.

[Dagmar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beeindruckend, mutig, offen und emotional. Leider nicht durchgängig.

[Gemma Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a family memoir. When the author's mother dies, she leaves a hoard of rubbish and a squalid house. As her daughter sorts through the mess she tries to uncover the truth about her mother's drinking and hoarding, the losses in her life, and their painful relationship. I found it an easy and at times moving read. At other times I found it faintly annoying....the writer has a very negative and I think unfairly reductive view of psychiatry and psychology which seems to be based purely on finding the DSM too medically focused ( that is its only purpose, it's a diagnostic manual, not a book about therapeutic approaches ) and on thinking hoarding is approached superficially based seemingly entirely on the captions in a patient information leaflet. She also makes several reflections which, while insightful in the context of herself and her mother, she then tries to extend into general or universal truths, which don't really hold up. Both the narrator and her mother are rather self absorbed and it makes the book a little stifling. Still an elegantly written and thoughtful piece of family history.

[Johanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book so fascinating that I read all the endnotes. Walker tells the story of her relationship with her mother, her grief at her mother's death, and her attempt to uncover some truth about her mother and their relationship when sorting through the hoard of stuff her mother left. Walker brings together really interesting ideas from psychology, design history, modern art, and social history as part of what is really a very personal story. Yet somehow this was still an easy read.

The book is very western-focused. For example, Walker touches on Mari Kondo without recognising the very different Shinto relationship to things that underpins Kondo's work.

[Mariana Núñez Sánchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one hit close to home, although in my case I would say it is a more “collecting” situation than hoarding.

Susannah writes a memoir about mourning loved ones, that circles around the broken relationship she had with her mother. She manages this by focusing on objects in her mother’s home and concludes that her mother became a hoarder without her noticing on time.

She is honest as she cleans her mother’s battered home and tries to find out who she really was as she wasn’t able to learn that when she was alive.

While you read this, you will notice how mourning through objects it is really a universal story.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Village book group read for April 2019. Read it 24 hours. (Thankfully it was Mother's Day so I was humoured.) Elements of this book were a little close to the bone to be a truly comfortable or entertaining read. Interesting, though, particularly the search for a meaning for the hoarding behaviour of her mother and the interpretation of what the hoard of stuff 'meant' (did it have a meaning?) There's a lot of love and forgiveness for a difficult relationship. Considering the swirling emotions, the orderliness of the book and the thinking comes as a welcome surprise.

[Lauren Putt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heart-breaking memoir about the fractured relationship between a mother and daughter. Patricia Gilmour, Walker's mother, was a hoarder and left behind a mess of stuff in her home when she passed away. Through a series of objects Walker uncovers in her mother's home, she discovers who her mother really was and the hardships and loss which she endured throughout her life. Walker discusses the relationships we all have with things and makes us aware of how much meaning we imbue into our possessions, however unmeaningful they are to others.

[Irni Farid · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Life of Stuff is a fascinating story mobilising family
memoir as a background and addressing the topic of hoarding and psychological conditions. At time we thought we could not understand and empathy with our loved one while living. Searching through possession when your loved passed on does not make it any easier task either. Discovery may lead to final understanding that everyone of us did our best to survive.

[Wallis Greenslade · Rating 1 out of 5]

While the author has some potentially interesting material on the psychology behind objects and hoarding, I really struggled to finish the book and found that the second half of the novel dragged on. The memoir became increasingly egocentric and difficult to relate to as the story continued, with an unlikeable protagonist and an incredibly stagnant and repetitive recounting of her family’s history.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 I thought this was an excellent book, a mix of the psychology of (& mental health issues that lead to) hoarding, along with the author's grief for and difficult relationship with her mother, as well as her family history and the tragedy of generations of loss in her family. Compelling, well written and really interesting.

[Becky Clark · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading about half way through. I felt it was more of a biography on the writers mum who I wasn’t particularly interested in. The book seemed to present as a book about our relationships with objects, and this felt like only a very small portion of the story.

[Marie-Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent memoir of a hoarder in the family; comprehensive, compelling and compassionate.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Irgendwann kommt der Moment, an dem die Eltern sterben und man sich um den Nachlass kümmern muss. Für Susannah Walker bedeutet das, dass sie das Haus ihrer Mutterräumen und für den Verkauf vorbereiten muss. Es bedeutet auch, sich mit einer Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen, die von der Zurückweisung ihrer Mutter geprägt war.

Kein gutes Verhältnis zu seiner Mutter zu haben, ist eines er letzten Tabus.
Diese Beschreibung trifft das Verhältnis von Susannah zu ihrer Mutter nicht, die beiden Frauen hatten überhaupt kein Verhältnis. Die Eltern haben sich früh getrennt, Susannah und ihr Bruder haben lange Zeit bei ihrem Vater gelebt. Nicht nur deshalb kennt sie ihre Mutter kaum, auch später haben sie sich kaum gesehen. Das macht es ihr die Aufgabe gleichzeitig leichter, aber auch schwerer.

Das Haus ist völlig verwahrlost, die Mutter hat sich jahrelang nicht darum gekümmert. Gleichzeitig konnte sie nichts wegwerfen und die Masse an Gegenständen ist nicht zu bewältigen. Anfangs ist Susannah Walker von ihrer Aufgabe überfordert. Was ist wichtig, was kann weg und was kann man vielleicht noch verkaufen? Stück für Stück für Stück arbeitet sie sich durch die Dinge durch, die für ihre Mutter wichtig waren erfährt so etwas über das Leben, an dem sie nie teilhaben konnte.

Die Geschichte von Susannahs Mutter hat mich traurig gemacht. Ihre Probleme waren schon früh zu sehen: sie litt unter Depressionen und war Alkoholikerin. Hilfe bekam sie nicht, ihre Schwestern haben die Probleme nicht ignoriert, aber klein geredet. Auch der Ehemann hat sich von ihr abgewandt, als sie nicht mehr funktionierte. Aber ich habe auch den Eindruck gewonnen, dass es der Mutter recht war, wieder alleine zu sein. In den Unterlagen, die Susannah findet, beschreibt die Mutter ihre Tochter als schreckliches Kind. Das zu lesen, muss schrecklich gewesen sein.

Susannah Walker hatte das Glück, einen Entrümpler zu finden, der mehr als nur seine Arbeit macht. Er nimmt ihr die Scham über das vernachlässigte Haus und was es für sie bedeutet; dass sie es zugelassen hat weil die Mutter ihr egal war. Denn dieser Gedanke ist falsch, das Haus war so verwahrlost, weil die Mutter es zugelassen hat.

Durch den Tod der Mutter bleiben viele Fragen unbeantwortet. Aber die wichtigste Frage konnte sie für sich beantworten: sie ist nicht schuld an der Situation. Eine Tochter muss die Mutter nicht lieben, nur weil sie ihr das Leben geschenkt hat. Die Erkenntnis ist hart, aber hilfreich. Susannah Walker kann sich von der Frau, die ihr das Leben geschenkt hat, ohne Bitterkeit verabschieden.

Wahrscheinlich glauben die meisten von uns, dass das Verhältnis zur eigenen Familie gut sein muss. Aber wie an allen Beziehungen muss man auch an dieser arbeiten und auch erkennen, wenn sie diese Arbeit nicht mehr wert ist.

[Jo_Scho_Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting account of the author’s difficult and tempestuous relationship with her mother, and the hoarding problem her mother had secretly cultivated. Beautifully written.

[Lena Marie]

Abgebrochen auf Seite 154 weil es mir zu langweilig wurde :D

[Jenny Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account on many levels, about the author’s life, her mother’s life, her mother’s hoarding, her mother’s house, her family history, and the history of our possessions. It was obviously extremely thoroughly researched and I really enjoyed it.

[Henry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very frustrating to read. The author bends over backwards to avoid admitting her mother was mentally ill and in doing so only highlights her white middle-class privilege. I started out very sympathetic to both the author and her mother, and I kept reading in the hope that my sympathy would be redeemed, but the book made them both so increasingly unlikeable that I gave up 90% of the way through.

[Tina Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our material age is causing us to accumulate 'stuff' at an alarming rate. For some individuals this is becoming a real problem, as they are apparently becoming overwhelmed by possessions, possibly for deep seated emotional reasons. This is a memoir of the time following the loss of a mother, a reflection on the nature of the relationship between mother and daughter (not easy in this case) and a review of the possessions left behind, along with a speculation of their value to their owner.

It may well cause you to look closely at the relationship that you have with your own stuff. It may well start the 'clearing out' process. Just remember, when you throw something 'away', there is no away.

[Alison J Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating (true)story /memoir about a daughter finding out that her mother was a hoarder. Although some of the chapters were a little long and with perhaps too much background detail, I thought it was beautifully written and so poignant.
When I went to clear my aunt’s house I was horrified to find newspapers all over the furniture in what had been a perfectly organised, pristine house, I could hear my grandmother spinning in her grave. However with the superb explanations Susannah gives us as to why hoarders do this, all became clear. I found it sad but I’m sure the author would have been relieved to get this on paper and clear her mind of everything that she realised in the weeks and months of house clearing.