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Things She Would Have Said Herself
For those who loved Olive Kitteridge and Boy Swallows Universe comes a darkly funny, deeply moving novel told with breathtaking originality and dazzling talent.
Leslie Bird loves being a wife and mother but loathes her husband and children. The only person she ever loved was born dead.
Meet Leslie Bird, the irascible matriarch of a big bonkers family, coming of age and to the boil, as the secrets and slights that have shaped her and her hapless husband's lives impact their children in the most profound and complex ways. In other words, everyone's story. Sort of. Because this is a story, and family, like none you've ever read before.
Things She Would Have Said Herself is a darkly funny, deeply moving novel about the lengths and breadths one woman will go to ignore her own and others' pain and what happens when she's confronted by it one sweltering Christmas day.
A story of motherhood, marriage, madness, unspeakable loss and the heartbreaking messy love that holds a family together. Honest, revealing, resonant and startlingly original, if you loved Olive Kitteridge and Boy Swallows Universe, you will love this book!
Leslie Bird loves being a wife and mother but loathes her husband and children. The only person she ever loved was born dead.
Meet Leslie Bird, the irascible matriarch of a big bonkers family, coming of age and to the boil, as the secrets and slights that have shaped her and her hapless husband's lives impact their children in the most profound and complex ways. In other words, everyone's story. Sort of. Because this is a story, and family, like none you've ever read before.
Things She Would Have Said Herself is a darkly funny, deeply moving novel about the lengths and breadths one woman will go to ignore her own and others' pain and what happens when she's confronted by it one sweltering Christmas day.
A story of motherhood, marriage, madness, unspeakable loss and the heartbreaking messy love that holds a family together. Honest, revealing, resonant and startlingly original, if you loved Olive Kitteridge and Boy Swallows Universe, you will love this book!
384 pages, Paperback
Published March 29, 2023
13 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
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April 11, 2023Anything with an Olive comparison is all for me!
April 14, 2023
I loved this! For so many reasons! It's refreshingly raw and honest, masterfully crafted, full of irreverent humour and poetic syntax. And it's unique! With flawed and complex characters who don't often get cast in the role of protagonist.
And just as this story's protagonist, Leslie Bird, feels less alone in the world while reading 'Olive Kitterridge', so too will you reading this novel, particularly if you know the trials of growing up in a dysfunctional family shaped by pain, grief and intergenerational trauma. If that’s you, I guarantee this story will ricochet through every fibre of your being.
In it, Leslie muses on how unusual it is to feel seen and not judged. I loved how Therese manages to hold up a mirror to examine personalities and family dynamics that are unsavoury, hard to look at and grounded in ignorance. But she does so without judgment so that perhaps, if we are open-minded and open-hearted enough, we might reach a place of understanding and empathy for what makes people and families the way they are, with all their messy flaws and imperfect love.
And just as this story's protagonist, Leslie Bird, feels less alone in the world while reading 'Olive Kitterridge', so too will you reading this novel, particularly if you know the trials of growing up in a dysfunctional family shaped by pain, grief and intergenerational trauma. If that’s you, I guarantee this story will ricochet through every fibre of your being.
In it, Leslie muses on how unusual it is to feel seen and not judged. I loved how Therese manages to hold up a mirror to examine personalities and family dynamics that are unsavoury, hard to look at and grounded in ignorance. But she does so without judgment so that perhaps, if we are open-minded and open-hearted enough, we might reach a place of understanding and empathy for what makes people and families the way they are, with all their messy flaws and imperfect love.
April 10, 2023
I absolutely loved this book. A beautifully written novel in the traditional literary fiction mode; brave, deeply considered, questioning, deeper layers and themes that reveal themselves to the inquisitive and sensitive reader. Under the messy love and political incorrect characters lies pain and loss ; the loss of a childhood friend, the loss of an unborn child, the loss from suicide. Crafted insight to a generation who are leaving us, to the events that shape lives and to the ebb and flow of families. A simple trap for the shallow who will undoubted rush in with narrow minded views and ironically call the characters biased. Like all great novels, not to be rushed but savoured and thought about. What is the author asking us to think about?
Bravo.
Bravo.
June 9, 2024
A challenging set of characters in a fictional world that ties back to previous generations who struggle to understand the times they find themselves today. The writing style is profoud, yet deeply uncomfortable and makes you squirm in places as you read.
There is so much character building, with small details that paint a rich tapestry of characters that it would be hard not to associate with people I have come across over the years in Australia of a certain era / generation.
Despite these challenging characters, the author somehow manages to hook you into a sense of sympathy and eventually empathy towards the end fo the book.
This book will upset the woke readers who have thin skin and are easily offended, isn't that why we read to learn and challenge ourselves to form a sense of empathy for others we might otherwise not meet or want to be around in the real world?
It is important to separate the artist from the art, in this case the craft creates some truly dark, challenging characters that all come from somewhere. I felt a sense of pity for some of these characters, their behaviour understandable, but not always excusable.
Loved the book and the world created.
There is so much character building, with small details that paint a rich tapestry of characters that it would be hard not to associate with people I have come across over the years in Australia of a certain era / generation.
Despite these challenging characters, the author somehow manages to hook you into a sense of sympathy and eventually empathy towards the end fo the book.
This book will upset the woke readers who have thin skin and are easily offended, isn't that why we read to learn and challenge ourselves to form a sense of empathy for others we might otherwise not meet or want to be around in the real world?
It is important to separate the artist from the art, in this case the craft creates some truly dark, challenging characters that all come from somewhere. I felt a sense of pity for some of these characters, their behaviour understandable, but not always excusable.
Loved the book and the world created.
May 9, 2023
This is by far one of the best Australian novels I've read.
It deserves to be read, and re-read and gifted and studied. Catherine Therese deserves to be recognised as one of Australia's great contemporary writers. She writes with the character skills of Zadie Smith and the narrative mastery of Jonathan Franzen. She is sharp, funny, compassionate and wise.
'Things She Would Have Said Herself' is a story about Leslie Bird - a woman hard to like, difficult to love, yet worthy of understanding. It's about silence in families, and the fractures of childhood that form the connective tissue of adult life. It's about sibling relationships, in all their intimacy, brokenness and estrangement. It's about our judgement of older generations. It's about lying and shit and grief and babies - real, lost, & imagined.
This novel will give you the giggles and bring you to tears.
It deserves to be read, and re-read and gifted and studied. Catherine Therese deserves to be recognised as one of Australia's great contemporary writers. She writes with the character skills of Zadie Smith and the narrative mastery of Jonathan Franzen. She is sharp, funny, compassionate and wise.
'Things She Would Have Said Herself' is a story about Leslie Bird - a woman hard to like, difficult to love, yet worthy of understanding. It's about silence in families, and the fractures of childhood that form the connective tissue of adult life. It's about sibling relationships, in all their intimacy, brokenness and estrangement. It's about our judgement of older generations. It's about lying and shit and grief and babies - real, lost, & imagined.
This novel will give you the giggles and bring you to tears.
June 1, 2023
DNFfed because I tried and tried up to 61% - the premise sounded interesting, a woman described as ‘irascible’ with a ‘bonkers family’, so as an irascible woman with a bonkers family myself, thought I’d get right into it, but meh, I just found her rude, with odd insights into a woman who liked being a wife and mother but didn’t like her husband and children (this is not me).
It’s written as a ‘darkly funny, deeply moving novel’, but as a person with a very dark sense of humour (I blame nursing), I just didn’t get it.
It’s written as a ‘darkly funny, deeply moving novel’, but as a person with a very dark sense of humour (I blame nursing), I just didn’t get it.
July 17, 2023
I was lucky enough to be gifted a copy of the Galley in exchange for my review.
A winding garden path of a story uniquely told back through time. This gives the reader a dawning understanding only after, of the events which shaped characters and gives empathy to their most unlikable traits. Leslie Bird starts out shinning a certain narrow light, but as we walk along the story popping in and out of memories and family disfunctions, we see her as she has devolved- the woman she has become and the woman she once was. This book asks us to bear witness to the evolution of our laughter, love and trauma, the high hopes and broken expectations that shape our lives, our loved one’s lives and the subconscious cues and tics we feed from and show to each other. Richly woven, the author has divulged the inner monologue of the characters, and it isn’t pretty. There is a hint of the pessimistic realist creeping through the inner thoughts of our main lady while she herself is too close to see the broader picture. We, the reader, get the benefit of the wider view, even if at first it takes us down a labyrinthine history to see it unfurl. Possibly an antithesis to the fluffy inspirational brimming with toxic positivity, this book shows us our flaws and the fabulous adventure of life we have not in spite of but because.
A winding garden path of a story uniquely told back through time. This gives the reader a dawning understanding only after, of the events which shaped characters and gives empathy to their most unlikable traits. Leslie Bird starts out shinning a certain narrow light, but as we walk along the story popping in and out of memories and family disfunctions, we see her as she has devolved- the woman she has become and the woman she once was. This book asks us to bear witness to the evolution of our laughter, love and trauma, the high hopes and broken expectations that shape our lives, our loved one’s lives and the subconscious cues and tics we feed from and show to each other. Richly woven, the author has divulged the inner monologue of the characters, and it isn’t pretty. There is a hint of the pessimistic realist creeping through the inner thoughts of our main lady while she herself is too close to see the broader picture. We, the reader, get the benefit of the wider view, even if at first it takes us down a labyrinthine history to see it unfurl. Possibly an antithesis to the fluffy inspirational brimming with toxic positivity, this book shows us our flaws and the fabulous adventure of life we have not in spite of but because.
April 8, 2024
Strewth! This was a hard read, as much because the characters were so relentlessly awful, as that I have known these people, this family, even one with its origins in Bathurst. There were amusing moments, moments I sympathised with, even empathising on occasion, but there was a certain amount of gritting my teeth & forging on through the darkness, too.
Leslie Bird's anger fairly leapt off the page, the love & hatred for her family: if the matriarch is a pool of surging rage, how could the rest of the family be anything but dysfunctional. You know she loved that useless Wallace, but you could feel that she'd be happy to kill him at the same time. Those bloody awful, ungrateful ticks, her children - Leslie does come to believe there may be something in that nurture thing, against her will, I think.
Christmastime covers a wealth of family sins, but I have felt that bubbling, oozing, roiling of underlying emotions waiting to explode: just add a scorching hot day & a dash or two of booze & you've got a volcanic eruption in the making. Well, that's families for you. How does it survive the loss of the matriarch?
Not exactly an enjoyable read - who could enjoy such an abrasive bunch? - but fascinating & well-written.
Leslie Bird's anger fairly leapt off the page, the love & hatred for her family: if the matriarch is a pool of surging rage, how could the rest of the family be anything but dysfunctional. You know she loved that useless Wallace, but you could feel that she'd be happy to kill him at the same time. Those bloody awful, ungrateful ticks, her children - Leslie does come to believe there may be something in that nurture thing, against her will, I think.
Christmastime covers a wealth of family sins, but I have felt that bubbling, oozing, roiling of underlying emotions waiting to explode: just add a scorching hot day & a dash or two of booze & you've got a volcanic eruption in the making. Well, that's families for you. How does it survive the loss of the matriarch?
Not exactly an enjoyable read - who could enjoy such an abrasive bunch? - but fascinating & well-written.
May 16, 2024
truly a fucking hideous piece of writing, not worth even using the pages as toilet paper as the words on them would still be there. for starters, i dont know if the blurb has even been less accurate - if by "darkly funny" then they mean an excuse for our bigoted, unlikeable and spiteful main character to use racial slurs (i mean come on, gollyw*g as an offensive term against people of colour? seriously? or the fun use of "transsexual" as some sort of offensive pejorative), then i suppose they succeeded in that respect. i sent a section of this book, in which leslie plays the organ, and my friend construed the organ playing as leslie achieving a feeling of orgasm. the character herself receives no comeuppance for effectively fucking over her family, passing away meekly at christmas day lunch, which honestly seems a relief for the rest of them. this is not the worst thing i have read this year, but this is the worst thing that i have finished this year. agonising, truly agonising.
June 17, 2023
Leslie Bird is the matriach of a seriously dysfunctional family. The secrets and slights that have shaped her and her husband's lives impact their children in the most profound and complex way.
This is a story of motherhood, madness, loss, and the messy love that holds a family together.
This book has received some great reviews, but it really didn't do it for me. It was just so chaotic, and I didn't feel a connection with any of the characters (I was actually was quite relieved to finish it!).
"Poppycock, I most definitely am my thoughts, Leslie countered silently, as one by one her truths blazed. And what's more, the whole world would ingite if it knew what women were really thinking."
This is a story of motherhood, madness, loss, and the messy love that holds a family together.
This book has received some great reviews, but it really didn't do it for me. It was just so chaotic, and I didn't feel a connection with any of the characters (I was actually was quite relieved to finish it!).
"Poppycock, I most definitely am my thoughts, Leslie countered silently, as one by one her truths blazed. And what's more, the whole world would ingite if it knew what women were really thinking."
March 2, 2023
If you loved Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, you’d love this book. And if you didn’t, then this Australian alternative written by a female writer might appeal to you more. Catherine is remarkably frank in this novel about how mad and damaging families can be. At the same time, she manages to paint an accurate picture of society in flux, our rapidly changing and yes so confusing world… she’s a master of my favourite genre - tragicomedy. And Therese is incapable of writing even one boring comma, let alone sentence!
November 16, 2023
I was transfixed by this author in a wonderful session at a recent writers' festival. She was very down to earth and funny and this sums up her novel "Things She Would Have Said Herself". The protagonist is Leslie Bird who with her husband Wallace head a messy and dysfunctional Aussie family with "five and a half" children. Now in her seventies she looks back over her life of discontent and disappointment. Although this may not sound very appealing this sprawling family story is hilariously and darkly funny.
March 29, 2023
Ok I read this novel because it was well written and readable but I didn’t really enjoy it. It’s about a seriously dysfunctional family suffering varying degrees of pain, (mental and physical), grief and confusion. We meet Leslie and Wallace Bird, their assorted offspring, in-laws and grandchildren and we are also shown their preoccupation with medical conditions (real or supposed), medications and poo. They are petty, politically incorrect and just plain unlikeable ……but they stick together, as families tend to do.
I felt no real connection to or sympathy for any of the characters and the fact that everyone turns up to Christmas together at the end is quite astonishing to me. The novel ends but you feel as if the characters might be stuck in some nightmarish loop and have to relive it all again.
Thank you to Good Reading for the advance copy.
I felt no real connection to or sympathy for any of the characters and the fact that everyone turns up to Christmas together at the end is quite astonishing to me. The novel ends but you feel as if the characters might be stuck in some nightmarish loop and have to relive it all again.
Thank you to Good Reading for the advance copy.
April 6, 2023
The funny, irascible, caustic and unapologetically honest Leslie Bird is an absolute delight in this tale of motherhood, marriage, loss and all that holds a family together, but this book just wasn’t for me. While the writing is brilliant, I found it hard to read and very wordy.
April 23, 2023
'If this novel were a song, it would be part Mozart’s Requiem, part Doris Day, part Radiohead.'
ali whitelock, poet & memoirist.
ali whitelock, poet & memoirist.
May 20, 2023
Awful. The back blurb said that I would love it if I loved Boy Swallows Universe. A lie. I did love Dalton’s book, this one made me feel like I was trapped in a bad dream. Couldn’t finish it.
September 5, 2023
I don't read a lot of fiction but this was great. Extremely challenging in almost every sense and a well-drawn examination of family and social mores.
November 1, 2023
Look close enough, and every family has a Leslie Bird. What if you said all those wild thoughts and opinions that pass through our minds? The characters of Catherine Therese’s first novel, Things She Would Have Said Herself do just that.
Leslie Bird is a wife and mother who has strong opinions about how they should run their lives. She is a woman who has suffered substantial loss and pain but is often looked on with disdain by her children, who have a private chat group dedicated to their mother. Leslie despises her family yet longs for the only person she’s ever loved, a child she still grieves. Prepare to meet the weird and wacky Bird family in the lead-up to a Christmas lunch that cracks open long-held secrets...
https://www.otherterrainjournal.com.a...
Leslie Bird is a wife and mother who has strong opinions about how they should run their lives. She is a woman who has suffered substantial loss and pain but is often looked on with disdain by her children, who have a private chat group dedicated to their mother. Leslie despises her family yet longs for the only person she’s ever loved, a child she still grieves. Prepare to meet the weird and wacky Bird family in the lead-up to a Christmas lunch that cracks open long-held secrets...
https://www.otherterrainjournal.com.a...
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews