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The Keepers
This daring and dazzling debut shines a light on the unsung heroes of our communities: the carers.
Jay is devoted to the care of her teenage twins who view the world as differently as it views them. Frank is sweet, sensitive and bullied, while whip-smart Teddy needs an iPad to speak. With an absent husband and battling a nightmare bureaucracy, Jay leans heavily on Keep, her lifelong half-real friend. But in the corner of her eye lurks her mother, and a childhood Jay knows she can’t ever outrun.
Jay believes she is managing quite well, with a half-grip on this half-life of hers. That is, until Teddy starts to get sick, refusing to eat, while doctors refuse to listen, confounding everything Jay thought she knew about what lies ahead.
The Keepers is an incredible and fiercely honest novel about the damage done by parents who can’t love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold.
Jay is devoted to the care of her teenage twins who view the world as differently as it views them. Frank is sweet, sensitive and bullied, while whip-smart Teddy needs an iPad to speak. With an absent husband and battling a nightmare bureaucracy, Jay leans heavily on Keep, her lifelong half-real friend. But in the corner of her eye lurks her mother, and a childhood Jay knows she can’t ever outrun.
Jay believes she is managing quite well, with a half-grip on this half-life of hers. That is, until Teddy starts to get sick, refusing to eat, while doctors refuse to listen, confounding everything Jay thought she knew about what lies ahead.
The Keepers is an incredible and fiercely honest novel about the damage done by parents who can’t love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold.
- GenresContemporaryFiction
336 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2022
23 people are currently reading
428 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
February 8, 2022
4.5 Stars!!!
To say that Jay, the protagonist of this wonderful debut novel, is doing it tough, is an enormous understatement. Where do we start.
I will start with her fifteen-year-old twins. Frank suffers from a terrible stutter, chronic asthma, and a skin condition. However, Frank’s problems seem quite benign when compared to his brother. Teddy has autism. And is high on the spectrum. He does not speak at all, communicating through an app on his iPad. He is terrified of the colour yellow. He can’t stand to have his hair cut.
Jay wonders what is going to happen to the twins when she is gone, especially Teddy. This question plagues her day and night. Maybe as a coping mechanism Jay has an imaginary friend who she turns to when in need of assistance and advice. Well, in fact, Keeper, that is what she calls him, seems to turn up on his terms and when he likes. But help he does.
Then we have Jerrick, the invisible husband. Jerrick is never around. He is always off with what seems like a different woman every time he does make a rare appearance on the page. Why does Jay put up with him? Because the twins need her full-time care, so she needs money from Jerrick.
What makes life even more difficult is a health system that is supposed to help families like Jay’s, but bizarrely make their life more difficult with inane bureaucratic regulations that simply do not make sense. Late in the book we find that the funding for Teddy’s iPad will no longer be provided. A General Practitioner whose answer to every one of Teddy’s ailments is Panadol, barely listening to Jay at each appointment.
Jay also cuts out newspaper clippings and pastes them in scrapbooks. These clippings are from real-life and are used to show the failings and inadequacies of a system which does not seem to be able to cope with the plethora of mental health problems that seem to grow yearly. Some of these reports and clippings are quite disturbing.
The novel is broken into two halves with one half devoted to Jay’s upbringing as a child. And we find that Jay had a horrible childhood. A loveless childhood. Jay’s mother, wow what a horrible character. I am quite surprised that Jay turned into such a lovely caring mother who is totally devoted to her twins after growing up and being treated, well mistreated, as badly as she was. Some of the treatment is despicable and bordering on criminal. Perhaps it was this dire childhood that forged her into the woman she is.
This is a dark, novel, but also a novel which shines light on mental health issues and how our country and the systems in place to handle these problems does not seem to be working. Many of these problems go unnoticed until they grow in intensity, metastasizing like a cancer, only to become known to the public when it turns into a story on the news, usually, like the scrapbook clippings, with fatalities.
I seem to have painted a very dark picture with this review, but there are always signs of hope, and there are always good people who go that extra mile to help. The Keepers who work tirelessly and sometimes against insurmountable odds to help those in need. Often within a system that hinders their efforts. And books like this, confrontational and alarming, help to shine light on societal problems. And Mental Health is a problem that needs addressing.
A wonderful debut and a great read. I think we will be hearing more from Al Campbell.
To say that Jay, the protagonist of this wonderful debut novel, is doing it tough, is an enormous understatement. Where do we start.
I will start with her fifteen-year-old twins. Frank suffers from a terrible stutter, chronic asthma, and a skin condition. However, Frank’s problems seem quite benign when compared to his brother. Teddy has autism. And is high on the spectrum. He does not speak at all, communicating through an app on his iPad. He is terrified of the colour yellow. He can’t stand to have his hair cut.
Jay wonders what is going to happen to the twins when she is gone, especially Teddy. This question plagues her day and night. Maybe as a coping mechanism Jay has an imaginary friend who she turns to when in need of assistance and advice. Well, in fact, Keeper, that is what she calls him, seems to turn up on his terms and when he likes. But help he does.
Then we have Jerrick, the invisible husband. Jerrick is never around. He is always off with what seems like a different woman every time he does make a rare appearance on the page. Why does Jay put up with him? Because the twins need her full-time care, so she needs money from Jerrick.
What makes life even more difficult is a health system that is supposed to help families like Jay’s, but bizarrely make their life more difficult with inane bureaucratic regulations that simply do not make sense. Late in the book we find that the funding for Teddy’s iPad will no longer be provided. A General Practitioner whose answer to every one of Teddy’s ailments is Panadol, barely listening to Jay at each appointment.
Jay also cuts out newspaper clippings and pastes them in scrapbooks. These clippings are from real-life and are used to show the failings and inadequacies of a system which does not seem to be able to cope with the plethora of mental health problems that seem to grow yearly. Some of these reports and clippings are quite disturbing.
The novel is broken into two halves with one half devoted to Jay’s upbringing as a child. And we find that Jay had a horrible childhood. A loveless childhood. Jay’s mother, wow what a horrible character. I am quite surprised that Jay turned into such a lovely caring mother who is totally devoted to her twins after growing up and being treated, well mistreated, as badly as she was. Some of the treatment is despicable and bordering on criminal. Perhaps it was this dire childhood that forged her into the woman she is.
This is a dark, novel, but also a novel which shines light on mental health issues and how our country and the systems in place to handle these problems does not seem to be working. Many of these problems go unnoticed until they grow in intensity, metastasizing like a cancer, only to become known to the public when it turns into a story on the news, usually, like the scrapbook clippings, with fatalities.
I seem to have painted a very dark picture with this review, but there are always signs of hope, and there are always good people who go that extra mile to help. The Keepers who work tirelessly and sometimes against insurmountable odds to help those in need. Often within a system that hinders their efforts. And books like this, confrontational and alarming, help to shine light on societal problems. And Mental Health is a problem that needs addressing.
A wonderful debut and a great read. I think we will be hearing more from Al Campbell.
February 26, 2022
The Keepers is the story of Jay, the devoted mother of twin teenage boys with autism. A full-time carer with an absent husband, her world revolves around her sons and their needs. Frank, a funny, talented artist, is bullied about his weight, his stutter, and his otherness. Teddy is non-verbal and requires constant high-level care. Jay’s love is fierce and her frustration with an inflexible system and uncaring society immense. Lonely and haunted by her own difficult childhood, Jay turns to Keep, her half-real lifelong companion, for support and guidance.
Drawing on the author’s lived experience, the characters are authentic, and their stories told with unflinching honesty. The narrative is fragmented: a contemporary timeline interspersed with memories of Jay’s traumatic childhood; her interactions with Keep, which veer towards magic realism; and a scrapbook of news articles cataloguing disasters that befall disabled people in a society which should care more. The prose is consistently beautiful, and the story threads woven together seamlessly. A powerful, lyrical debut about people whose voices are rarely heard, The Keepers is ultimately about the power of love bestowed and withheld and deserves to reach a broad audience.
Drawing on the author’s lived experience, the characters are authentic, and their stories told with unflinching honesty. The narrative is fragmented: a contemporary timeline interspersed with memories of Jay’s traumatic childhood; her interactions with Keep, which veer towards magic realism; and a scrapbook of news articles cataloguing disasters that befall disabled people in a society which should care more. The prose is consistently beautiful, and the story threads woven together seamlessly. A powerful, lyrical debut about people whose voices are rarely heard, The Keepers is ultimately about the power of love bestowed and withheld and deserves to reach a broad audience.
August 14, 2022
I really love this book. I should probably say “loved” but I’m not ready to accept that it’s over. Really. Amazing writing.
I wasn’t sure whether it would hit too close to home being the parent of a child with a disability, but no, it was like being heard and seen. Al Campbell is a poetic and deep force. Every passage is purposeful, crafted, a well of hidden and multiple meanings, so insanely creative and clever. I loved the storytelling across time periods, and the pace of this story.
I wasn’t sure whether it would hit too close to home being the parent of a child with a disability, but no, it was like being heard and seen. Al Campbell is a poetic and deep force. Every passage is purposeful, crafted, a well of hidden and multiple meanings, so insanely creative and clever. I loved the storytelling across time periods, and the pace of this story.
August 29, 2022
This was the first book in years that I couldn’t put down! I was so invested in the characters that I stayed up till the wee hours to finish it. Equally heartbreaking and beautiful, it was the relationship between Jay and her sons, which was so genuinely loving and authentically portrayed, that will stay with me for a long time.
December 2, 2022
Anyone who has spent extended periods of time with globally developmentally delayed and autistic children cannot help but be affected by this hard hitting novel.
The variations of abuse present here are stark, honest and so real, nothing is held back. From news stories to CSA this novel calls for awareness and action around some incredibly important issues.
Every single type of abuse is represented unflinchingly from torture to neglect, state to family -- no stone left unturned.
Highly recommend, especially for Australians.
You will learn something.
The variations of abuse present here are stark, honest and so real, nothing is held back. From news stories to CSA this novel calls for awareness and action around some incredibly important issues.
Every single type of abuse is represented unflinchingly from torture to neglect, state to family -- no stone left unturned.
Highly recommend, especially for Australians.
You will learn something.
January 7, 2023
I know people have raved about this book. I’m finding it hard to write a review because it’s very unique - in a good way. It’s a hard read (especially the flashbacks) though I loved the way it shines a light on the gritty nature of being a carer - I could feel the authors lived experience in that very much. And I felt her love for her kids, which felt very intimate and familiar. 4 stars.
June 3, 2025
Intense and raw. Beautiful imagery. Lots of heavy topics, grateful they are being told. It felt like I was seeing life from Jay's perspective, as rough as it was. The influence of love throughout the story was palpable.
July 7, 2025
This is the latest book chosen by one of the book clubs to which I belong - it was an unsettling read to say the least. Very difficult to credit the inhumanity that individuals display towards others but even more so when that cruelty is directed at one’s own children across generations.
The writing was measured yet graphic in many places with some indelible commentary that remained with the reader after quite devastating and shocking revelations.
Parts still remain to be processed by me and I trust the discussion will focus on these points that need more unpacking when we gather.
The writing was measured yet graphic in many places with some indelible commentary that remained with the reader after quite devastating and shocking revelations.
Parts still remain to be processed by me and I trust the discussion will focus on these points that need more unpacking when we gather.
May 10, 2022
The Keepers is a fascinating read. It is sweet and sour at the same time, fabulous and horrible. I was intrigued throughout and really connected with Jay and her connection to the boys. A wonderfully different read.
July 23, 2024
2.5
Multi generational trauma with single parenting teenage autistic twins with significant support needs
Multi generational trauma with single parenting teenage autistic twins with significant support needs
November 17, 2022
4.5 stars. Brilliant debut novel from an Australian author who only started writing in her 50s. Really unusual and unique story - a mix of genres, more than a touch of magic realism, heartbreaking and uplifting all at once. Partly based on the author’s own life as a mum of twin boys with autism and one with chronic health issues also, I can only hope some of the incidents from the protagonist Jay’s horrendous childhood were not based on fact. If they are, then this woman is an absolute force to have survived and overcome such abuse and neglect, and to become a published author while also being the sole full-time carer of her sons. It gives a raw, visceral view of the reality of caring for special-needs children and the frustrations of navigating the disability and medical systems. I so wanted Jay to have a happy ending and to reunite with her lost love Marc; to have some happiness and some time for herself in her busy life, but it’s not that type of book to wrap things up in a neat bow. I also wished she’d left her evil mother to rot in her nursing home instead of continuing to accept her vitriol, but Jay is wise and evolved, despite the chaos of her life. A powerful book that will stay with me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 27, 2022
Beautiful and uncompromising. Incredible writing and an engaging narrative - hard to believe this is a debut. Al Campbell’s strengths are many but what struck me most are the passages that explore doubt and fear and those innermost thoughts that most would refuse to acknowledge, and I guess that’s the point - ignoring them is a luxury that most don’t realise they have. Fantastic work.
December 29, 2022
A pretty harrowing read! And a very dodgey start. I had to read the first few pages about 3 times and I still didn’t get it! So I moved on hoping it would make sense later which it kind of did. The story does get better but it makes for some pretty confronting reading. It’s a tale of a mum, Jay, with twin sons who have mental and physical disabilities and a husband who is not present and a very dysfunctional marriage. However as the story unfolds it focuses more on Jays upbringing and childhood which includes family violence, mental health issues, serious violence and manipulation. It’s pretty confronting but the storyline is less confusing and runs a clear narrative from about 1/3 in. I found myself wondering if I would finish the novel but then it raced along. I’m glad I read it but it wasn’t particularly easy.
March 22, 2023
If you only read one book this year, make it The Keepers (UQP 2022) by Al Campbell. This immersive, extraordinary fictional story, informed by the author’s insightful real-life experience, is an utterly compelling and heartbreaking yet hopeful tale of resilience and trauma. The subject matter is uncomfortable and confronting. The writing is breathtaking.
Someone once said that no matter how hard it is for us to read a terrible story of trauma or abuse or neglect, it serves us to read it, because for someone else, that story is their reality. Not a novel, or fiction, but the truth of their everyday lives. Someone has lived that story. My own experience has shown me again and again that no matter how incredible a fictional story is, the truth is always more difficult to believe.
The Keepers is the story of Jay, the mother of twin sons with severe disabilities. Frank is sensitive, artistic, sweet and constantly bullied, while Teddy is non-verbal, intelligent and struggles to conquer small everyday activities that most of us take for granted. The story centres on Jay’s relentless parenting duties, tied up with the love and care she devotes to her children. This is the most intense depiction of caring for children with disabilities that I’ve ever read.
But it also travails Jay’s childhood, in a series of flashback sections that are horrific, compelling and completely plausible. Jay’s family of origin will stay with me – their cruelty, their loyalties, their bizarre demands, their twisted sense of right and wrong, their desire to control every aspect of Jay’s life, and the ways and means in which they achieve that. Campbell has captured this image of a powerless, determined and traumatised child in a way that left me broken.
Campbell is quoted as saying: ‘…what can I say – I grew up with monsters and I can’t ever not see them (or call them out, or write about them).’ Again, the truth is always more impossible than fiction.
Another devastating aspect of the book is the real-life included statistics – Jay keeps a scrapbook of news reports of cases where disabled children or adults were harmed or died of neglect because of the lack (of support, money, will) of our health care system. She is a survivor, and a truly dedicated carer, and she’s determined her own boys will not end up like any of the people she reads about. She devotes herself to their care a thousand percent. It's hard to read. Harder still to know that the author has two children of her own with disabilities, and that her struggle and ferocious love is necessarily informed by her own experience with ‘the system’.
Yes, this is an uncomfortable book, as Jay battles the bureaucracy, tries to outrun her own childhood, copes with an absent husband and then struggles even further when Teddy becomes slowly and mysteriously ill, sicker each week with a disease or condition that no-one can diagnose or name, let alone cure.
But the flipside to the many distressing elements of this story is the absolute resilience, hope, fight, courage, determination and loyalty of Jay – and her children – to survive. Love seeps from the pages of this book, a beautiful familial love, a sacrificial, unending, joyful love that readers will recognise and respect.
How does Campbell do it? How does she take such a confronting story and make it accessible and moving and uplifting? Three things. Firstly, stunning literary writing. Evocative imagery and sensory depictions that will blow your mind. Beautiful, gorgeous sentences. Writing that sings from the pages.
Secondly, humour. Jay and her sons (even Teddy, who manages basic communication through an iPad), each display their individual senses of humour. The book is laugh out loud funny in places, the situations so Kafkaesque, the behaviour of characters so deplorable or heart-warming, the dialogue so razor sharp and cutting. Humour lightens the novel and allows the reader a space to breathe.
And thirdly, Keep. Campbell writes a touch of magical realism into this story with the addition of Keeper, her ‘lifelong half-real friend’. With her since childhood, Keep is part imagination, part survival instinct, part nightmare, part dream, a coping mechanism, sometimes scolding Jay or belittling her, sometimes encouraging and supporting her, but always THERE. In her complicated, complex life, Keep has always been the one constant. The nuanced way in which Keep is woven throughout the book is a testament to Campbell’s skills as a writer, and her emotional subtlety.
The Keepers is ‘a fiercely honest novel about the damage done by parents who can’t love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold’. Because those without a voice rely on their carers – their parents, mostly – to speak for them. This book cracks open the broken system in which parents must fight tooth and nail for the resources to help them manage, against a bureaucracy that is blind to the financial and emotional toll it takes, and seemingly unable to recognise that a parent or carer’s intimate, loving thread with an individual is stronger and more valuable than anything a third party can provide. Parents usually know their children better than anyone else. This story is a delicate balancing act between Jay as a child, when her family were harmful and no authorities intervened, and Jay as an adult, trying to parent effectively while being told by authorities that others could do a better job (or that it’s more cost-efficient for others to care for her children).
This book will stay with me. I know I’ll be thinking of the characters, and the social situation which suppresses them, for a long time. Brutal, honest, authentic, magical, extraordinary, achingly moving and eternally optimistic, The Keepers is the rarest of novels, one that makes you wish the story hasn’t finished, and makes you believe that somewhere out there, these characters and their stories live on, doing better, being better, becoming more. I cannot recommend this more highly.
Someone once said that no matter how hard it is for us to read a terrible story of trauma or abuse or neglect, it serves us to read it, because for someone else, that story is their reality. Not a novel, or fiction, but the truth of their everyday lives. Someone has lived that story. My own experience has shown me again and again that no matter how incredible a fictional story is, the truth is always more difficult to believe.
The Keepers is the story of Jay, the mother of twin sons with severe disabilities. Frank is sensitive, artistic, sweet and constantly bullied, while Teddy is non-verbal, intelligent and struggles to conquer small everyday activities that most of us take for granted. The story centres on Jay’s relentless parenting duties, tied up with the love and care she devotes to her children. This is the most intense depiction of caring for children with disabilities that I’ve ever read.
But it also travails Jay’s childhood, in a series of flashback sections that are horrific, compelling and completely plausible. Jay’s family of origin will stay with me – their cruelty, their loyalties, their bizarre demands, their twisted sense of right and wrong, their desire to control every aspect of Jay’s life, and the ways and means in which they achieve that. Campbell has captured this image of a powerless, determined and traumatised child in a way that left me broken.
Campbell is quoted as saying: ‘…what can I say – I grew up with monsters and I can’t ever not see them (or call them out, or write about them).’ Again, the truth is always more impossible than fiction.
Another devastating aspect of the book is the real-life included statistics – Jay keeps a scrapbook of news reports of cases where disabled children or adults were harmed or died of neglect because of the lack (of support, money, will) of our health care system. She is a survivor, and a truly dedicated carer, and she’s determined her own boys will not end up like any of the people she reads about. She devotes herself to their care a thousand percent. It's hard to read. Harder still to know that the author has two children of her own with disabilities, and that her struggle and ferocious love is necessarily informed by her own experience with ‘the system’.
Yes, this is an uncomfortable book, as Jay battles the bureaucracy, tries to outrun her own childhood, copes with an absent husband and then struggles even further when Teddy becomes slowly and mysteriously ill, sicker each week with a disease or condition that no-one can diagnose or name, let alone cure.
But the flipside to the many distressing elements of this story is the absolute resilience, hope, fight, courage, determination and loyalty of Jay – and her children – to survive. Love seeps from the pages of this book, a beautiful familial love, a sacrificial, unending, joyful love that readers will recognise and respect.
How does Campbell do it? How does she take such a confronting story and make it accessible and moving and uplifting? Three things. Firstly, stunning literary writing. Evocative imagery and sensory depictions that will blow your mind. Beautiful, gorgeous sentences. Writing that sings from the pages.
Secondly, humour. Jay and her sons (even Teddy, who manages basic communication through an iPad), each display their individual senses of humour. The book is laugh out loud funny in places, the situations so Kafkaesque, the behaviour of characters so deplorable or heart-warming, the dialogue so razor sharp and cutting. Humour lightens the novel and allows the reader a space to breathe.
And thirdly, Keep. Campbell writes a touch of magical realism into this story with the addition of Keeper, her ‘lifelong half-real friend’. With her since childhood, Keep is part imagination, part survival instinct, part nightmare, part dream, a coping mechanism, sometimes scolding Jay or belittling her, sometimes encouraging and supporting her, but always THERE. In her complicated, complex life, Keep has always been the one constant. The nuanced way in which Keep is woven throughout the book is a testament to Campbell’s skills as a writer, and her emotional subtlety.
The Keepers is ‘a fiercely honest novel about the damage done by parents who can’t love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold’. Because those without a voice rely on their carers – their parents, mostly – to speak for them. This book cracks open the broken system in which parents must fight tooth and nail for the resources to help them manage, against a bureaucracy that is blind to the financial and emotional toll it takes, and seemingly unable to recognise that a parent or carer’s intimate, loving thread with an individual is stronger and more valuable than anything a third party can provide. Parents usually know their children better than anyone else. This story is a delicate balancing act between Jay as a child, when her family were harmful and no authorities intervened, and Jay as an adult, trying to parent effectively while being told by authorities that others could do a better job (or that it’s more cost-efficient for others to care for her children).
This book will stay with me. I know I’ll be thinking of the characters, and the social situation which suppresses them, for a long time. Brutal, honest, authentic, magical, extraordinary, achingly moving and eternally optimistic, The Keepers is the rarest of novels, one that makes you wish the story hasn’t finished, and makes you believe that somewhere out there, these characters and their stories live on, doing better, being better, becoming more. I cannot recommend this more highly.
April 2, 2022
The Keepers was an incredible read. I couldn't put it down even when in the raw, 'inconveniently truthful' chapters. Al Campbell's writing is truly gripping, peppered with humour, and tells a story of a mother, her sons, failures in community, despair, moments of hope and so much more. Essential reading for anyone interested in the silenced voices. This story has stayed with me.
May 6, 2022
This book is brilliant. It took me in so many different directions, emotionally. The last novel that moved me in such a way was ‘A Little Life’, by Hanya Yanagihara. The voice is what locks you in. I believe it’s an important work.
June 14, 2023
Devastating from start to finish. Brilliant from the first page to the last. Made me cry on a busy train!
April 21, 2022
Al Campbell’s The Keepers is a book about possibilities, imagination, and most profoundly, love. It opens with a scrapbook entry about the death of an autistic child who has escaped from respite care. Imminent death is a constant possibility, and Jay, the mother of autistic twin teens knows this well. She curates all of the other (known) possibilities in a series of notebooks about the fates of (mostly) autistic people. These entries—derived from non-fictional events in recent Australian history—are a stark reflection of what happens when we don’t have a social model of disability. Instead, the world does not accommodate and so does not sufficiently protect those who need it. Indeed, it often feels to Jay that the world would simply prefer not to have to deal with what disability can look like at all.
Jay, coming from a traumatic upbringing of abuse knows what it is not to have been loved enough, and yet she loves her sons in abundance. During her own childhood, Jay conjures a companion that she names Keep. Keep is no ordinary imaginary friend. In some ways, he appears benignly nightmarish, but this is not the kind of thing to frighten the child Jay, who takes comfort from his companionship in the worst of times. Keep remains a sporadic presence in Jay’s life, and towards the end is able to provide a kind of magical thinking worm-hole view of a future in which Jay’s son Frank lives in a best-case scenario, balancing independence and agency with loving care. Her other son, Teddy, who is more ‘problematically’ disabled in the present, is absent in this possible future. A future for Teddy without Jay’s caring presence lies beyond the realms of imagination. This terrifying blank is amply foregrounded by what occurs when Teddy, non-verbal, becomes seriously ill and Jay faces the reality of medical care for a child who cannot elucidate his own symptoms. Though what Campbell has written is a fiction, what happens to Teddy could as well appear in the scrapbooks kept by his mother, as the parent of every child similar to Teddy (myself included) knows all too well. What happens to Teddy in the hospital happens in some iteration every day. Any parent of a child like Teddy dreads the possibility of serious illness, the spectre of physical and chemical restraints, not to mention preventable death.
Though Jay is constantly braced both for the possibilities that each day might present and for the long-term future, she is also consistently finding small pockets for the possibility of hope for her boys, despite her expectations. Sometimes circumstances and people surprise her and cause her to realise that all is not bleak or as she has imagined it to be. If small things can get better in the present, there opens the space for a future. Even in her scrapbooks, Jay’s final entry veers away from fear and into a finger of belief in the inherent good of the society that she will eventually have to trust to care for her sons.
The Keepers is a love story, and it reads also as a call to action, a call to do better, to support the NDIS in its original vision, to provide much better training to doctors and other health providers, to keep disabled people safe so that there is no need to fear. In this way, the text begs not just for awareness of the needs of autistic people, but for acceptance, respect and love. It asks that we pave the way for a better future. I thank Al Campbell for such a book with all my heart.
Jay, coming from a traumatic upbringing of abuse knows what it is not to have been loved enough, and yet she loves her sons in abundance. During her own childhood, Jay conjures a companion that she names Keep. Keep is no ordinary imaginary friend. In some ways, he appears benignly nightmarish, but this is not the kind of thing to frighten the child Jay, who takes comfort from his companionship in the worst of times. Keep remains a sporadic presence in Jay’s life, and towards the end is able to provide a kind of magical thinking worm-hole view of a future in which Jay’s son Frank lives in a best-case scenario, balancing independence and agency with loving care. Her other son, Teddy, who is more ‘problematically’ disabled in the present, is absent in this possible future. A future for Teddy without Jay’s caring presence lies beyond the realms of imagination. This terrifying blank is amply foregrounded by what occurs when Teddy, non-verbal, becomes seriously ill and Jay faces the reality of medical care for a child who cannot elucidate his own symptoms. Though what Campbell has written is a fiction, what happens to Teddy could as well appear in the scrapbooks kept by his mother, as the parent of every child similar to Teddy (myself included) knows all too well. What happens to Teddy in the hospital happens in some iteration every day. Any parent of a child like Teddy dreads the possibility of serious illness, the spectre of physical and chemical restraints, not to mention preventable death.
Though Jay is constantly braced both for the possibilities that each day might present and for the long-term future, she is also consistently finding small pockets for the possibility of hope for her boys, despite her expectations. Sometimes circumstances and people surprise her and cause her to realise that all is not bleak or as she has imagined it to be. If small things can get better in the present, there opens the space for a future. Even in her scrapbooks, Jay’s final entry veers away from fear and into a finger of belief in the inherent good of the society that she will eventually have to trust to care for her sons.
The Keepers is a love story, and it reads also as a call to action, a call to do better, to support the NDIS in its original vision, to provide much better training to doctors and other health providers, to keep disabled people safe so that there is no need to fear. In this way, the text begs not just for awareness of the needs of autistic people, but for acceptance, respect and love. It asks that we pave the way for a better future. I thank Al Campbell for such a book with all my heart.
June 28, 2022
I finished The Keepers by Al Campell a few days ago. Several writer friends had recommended it and I also watched with admiration the interview the author had with Annabel Crabb at the Sydney Writers Festival. The book sat on my tbr for too long.
After finishing the novel, the tears ran down my face. I cried for the cruelty of people, the abuse they inflict with such hard held self-justification. I cried for the neglect of children and indubatible love demonstrated by mothers.
It was a challenging read. It is a dark book. We transition from the horror of Jay's childhood to the overwhelming challenges she faces as the mother of two disabled children. The fiction is interspersed with newspaper articles (genuine), establishing the mistreatement and brutality disabled people suffer at the hands of carers and the community.
The book is immersive. The emotions hit you hard. In turns, I felt sick to my stomach with fear during some of the more violent scenes played out in Jay's childhood home. Equally, my heart lifted with the love and determination and acceptance of self demonstrated by Jay. She is weird and she knows it and everyone else can just deal with it or off you go.
Surprisingly, I laughed. The conversations between Jay and her son Frank, shift between gently amusing so that you smile to yourself - to bitingly satirical. The relationship between Jay and Frank is one of the most precious aspects of the novel, and it is Frank, as opposed to the other male characters in the book, who shows loyalty, courage and steadfastness.
Much has been written about how this story draws from real life. And the backstory does make the novel more poignant. Equally, the writing is brilliant. Campbell's style is ferociously honest. She leaves you no space to look away. She demands you read every painful and difficult sentence. So absorbed was I that most times, it felt like I was IN this fictional world.
I think we're over reading light and joyous novels to escape the Covid deal. I think it's time to read something that matters. This is a profound read. One of the best Australian fiction has to offer.
After finishing the novel, the tears ran down my face. I cried for the cruelty of people, the abuse they inflict with such hard held self-justification. I cried for the neglect of children and indubatible love demonstrated by mothers.
It was a challenging read. It is a dark book. We transition from the horror of Jay's childhood to the overwhelming challenges she faces as the mother of two disabled children. The fiction is interspersed with newspaper articles (genuine), establishing the mistreatement and brutality disabled people suffer at the hands of carers and the community.
The book is immersive. The emotions hit you hard. In turns, I felt sick to my stomach with fear during some of the more violent scenes played out in Jay's childhood home. Equally, my heart lifted with the love and determination and acceptance of self demonstrated by Jay. She is weird and she knows it and everyone else can just deal with it or off you go.
Surprisingly, I laughed. The conversations between Jay and her son Frank, shift between gently amusing so that you smile to yourself - to bitingly satirical. The relationship between Jay and Frank is one of the most precious aspects of the novel, and it is Frank, as opposed to the other male characters in the book, who shows loyalty, courage and steadfastness.
Much has been written about how this story draws from real life. And the backstory does make the novel more poignant. Equally, the writing is brilliant. Campbell's style is ferociously honest. She leaves you no space to look away. She demands you read every painful and difficult sentence. So absorbed was I that most times, it felt like I was IN this fictional world.
I think we're over reading light and joyous novels to escape the Covid deal. I think it's time to read something that matters. This is a profound read. One of the best Australian fiction has to offer.
April 19, 2023
The Keepers, by Al Campbell
dark emotional medium-paced
Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
5.0
Keeper - noun
1 someone who keeps or guards.
2 a gamekeeper
3 a wicket-keeper.
4 a shopkeeper.
5 a goalkeeper.
6 a person in charge of something valuable, as the custodian of a museum, zoo, or any section thereof.
Jay is the keeper/carer for her twin teenage sons. She navigates the NDIS, and the systems.. school, medical... and she has a half-real friend who is her keeper from childhood.
In addition we learn of Jay's upbringing, her relationships with her narcissistic mother, her grandparents, her first love, the boys' father...the man who didn't get the memo that life involves things you'd prefer not to do.
This is a challenging read about abuse and neglect, yet it is also a love story. It is beautifully written and reads like poetry. It moves between reality and fantasy and is a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. Excellent. I look forward to reading it again, I've no doubt I will get even more from a second reading.
The leak in the ceiling analogy (p 222) is stunning!
dark emotional medium-paced
Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
5.0
Keeper - noun
1 someone who keeps or guards.
2 a gamekeeper
3 a wicket-keeper.
4 a shopkeeper.
5 a goalkeeper.
6 a person in charge of something valuable, as the custodian of a museum, zoo, or any section thereof.
Jay is the keeper/carer for her twin teenage sons. She navigates the NDIS, and the systems.. school, medical... and she has a half-real friend who is her keeper from childhood.
In addition we learn of Jay's upbringing, her relationships with her narcissistic mother, her grandparents, her first love, the boys' father...the man who didn't get the memo that life involves things you'd prefer not to do.
This is a challenging read about abuse and neglect, yet it is also a love story. It is beautifully written and reads like poetry. It moves between reality and fantasy and is a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. Excellent. I look forward to reading it again, I've no doubt I will get even more from a second reading.
The leak in the ceiling analogy (p 222) is stunning!
December 31, 2023
‘Wildly beautiful’ is the perfect way to describe this raw, tender debut. The writing is literary-top shelf: poetic, provocative, honest and surprisingly funny.
The Keepers is a whip smart, fiercely unapologetic insight into how we treat vulnerable people, their families, and carers. The story is informed by the author’s own experience of raising children with complex needs. Half this novel was written on the ninth floor of the Queensland Children’s Hospital.
Fictional mother Jay cares for her teen sons. They’re on the autism spectrum and are equally fascinating: Frank is highly functioning, artistic, and kind, and Teddy is non-verbal, imaginative and smart. I felt furious for Jay as she battles the NDIS, deals with well-meaning but hurtful acquaintances, and the frustration of her opinion being ignored. Deeply moving flashbacks reveal how Jay’s own childhood was shaped by intergenerational abuse. A scrapbook of real-life news reports of neglected and abused children offers a powerful rebuke to us all. We can, and should, do better.
An exquisitely troubling yet hopeful tale of motherhood.
The Keepers is a whip smart, fiercely unapologetic insight into how we treat vulnerable people, their families, and carers. The story is informed by the author’s own experience of raising children with complex needs. Half this novel was written on the ninth floor of the Queensland Children’s Hospital.
Fictional mother Jay cares for her teen sons. They’re on the autism spectrum and are equally fascinating: Frank is highly functioning, artistic, and kind, and Teddy is non-verbal, imaginative and smart. I felt furious for Jay as she battles the NDIS, deals with well-meaning but hurtful acquaintances, and the frustration of her opinion being ignored. Deeply moving flashbacks reveal how Jay’s own childhood was shaped by intergenerational abuse. A scrapbook of real-life news reports of neglected and abused children offers a powerful rebuke to us all. We can, and should, do better.
An exquisitely troubling yet hopeful tale of motherhood.
January 12, 2022
The blurb on the front quotes Annabel Crabb as saying 'The Keepers is an extraordinary piece of writing.' And I definitely agree.
This story follows Jay as she cares for, advocates for and ultimately fights for her twin teenage neurodivergent sons. All while dealing with an absent husband and a childhood that continues to haunt her. It is raw and emotional, told from a first person point of view. To be honest, it took me a while to become accustomed to the writing style, the language bouncing around Jay's head, her thoughts, feelings, her unadultered love for her sons. But ultimately, it is the perfect way to portray Jay's life, to draw the reader into the chaos and rigid routine that is her life, and I applaud Al Campbell for her honest telling of this story.
Definitely a must read. 4 1/2 stars.
Thank you to the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This story follows Jay as she cares for, advocates for and ultimately fights for her twin teenage neurodivergent sons. All while dealing with an absent husband and a childhood that continues to haunt her. It is raw and emotional, told from a first person point of view. To be honest, it took me a while to become accustomed to the writing style, the language bouncing around Jay's head, her thoughts, feelings, her unadultered love for her sons. But ultimately, it is the perfect way to portray Jay's life, to draw the reader into the chaos and rigid routine that is her life, and I applaud Al Campbell for her honest telling of this story.
Definitely a must read. 4 1/2 stars.
Thank you to the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
August 5, 2022
Annabelle Crabbe interviewed the author Al Campbell at the SydneyWriters Festival in May. Al told her story and read a section. I was hooked - couldn’t wait to get home and start reading. If this had been read by Al as an audiobook there is a big chance I would have seen it in a very different light. However I struggled to read it as a ebook and even with 3 renewals I gave up 39 pages from the end. Just a very dark story and even the humour left me cold. So disappointed. I hope that Al does release it as a self read Audiobook in the future. I might be tempted to try it again after a very long break.
Indy Reads ebook
Indy Reads ebook
April 7, 2022
Once you understand the style of Al’s writing - which is a unique, you will not put this book down…caring for two autistic sons, reliving the past and understanding the present ‘The Keepers’ is a book like no other, you will finish this book a changed person! I was left shocked and sad by the story of growing up in an abusive unloving family, the isolation and despair of living as a single parent carer and the effects of living a life without love or support, from your community, country and co-parent.
July 18, 2022
This wonderful and exquisitely written novel that will touch your heart and your soul is currently on the shortlist of
The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award
If you loved this brilliant novel as much as I did please give it your vote via the link below.
This novel should be read by all, as it is an important story about a forgotten section of our society whose voice is rarely, if ever heard.
https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/queensland...
The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award
If you loved this brilliant novel as much as I did please give it your vote via the link below.
This novel should be read by all, as it is an important story about a forgotten section of our society whose voice is rarely, if ever heard.
https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/queensland...
April 5, 2022
An amazing and powerful book by first time Brisbane author Al Campbell, it tells the story of Jay a mother of two sons with autism. Drawn from her real life experiences as full time carer for her disabled sons, this story is intriguing, complex and intense. A fascinating story that draws you in. Beautifully written, it is a difficult and troubling read at times, but one definitely worth persevering with.
January 2, 2023
I initially found this a hard book to get into but gosh it was worth the perseverance. It’s a whole new world to understand the life of full time carers and this book did a fabulous job of introducing it. Poetically written and the narrative unfolds and deepens as you go through. Particularly learning more about Jay who as essentially a single parent of two children with high needs is the last to have her story told.
May 12, 2022
This is a sad but beautiful book about one woman's very hard life and uncompromising love for her two disabled children. She has survived a horrible mother, is surviving a marriage and father of her children that is also horrible, and yet is there for her two children at all times and through enormous difficulties.
July 17, 2022
To be supportive to the subject matter, I wanted to love this. The traumatic life of the protagonist draws enormous empathy, without a doubt. Her upbringing and the hideous treatment she encountered were confronting. I just found the way the more abstract elements were written detracted so strongly from the subject matter that it lost me.
April 20, 2022
Wow. What an incredible read. I’m an in absolute awe of this writer’s talent. The how the whole story fit in a book which didn’t drag on, was highly entertaining, is remarkable.
I love this and have now recommended it to all of my friends and family.
I love this and have now recommended it to all of my friends and family.
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