Terrifying and timely: ‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch
This 2023 Booker Prize winning novel is terrifying because we are immediately plunged into its setting of a modern, Western nation in the thrall of an oppressive regime that is gaining more control every day.
It’s timely because – well, have you seen the news lately?
It’s certainly a dystopian story but, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the horror is all too believable right from the outset. In Prophet Song, no armed coup results in a change of government – the country’s people (Ireland, in this case) voted them in. While segments of the community are in support of the ever-increasing controls over life and liberty that result, many try to resist, and are punished for it.
Hmm…where does that remind me of?
There is no gentle lead-in for the reader. The opening pages see Eilish, mother of four, answering the door to two plainclothes police who, we learn, are from Ireland’s newly formed secret police. They are polite but insistent: she is to tell Larry, her husband, that they want to interview him. Larry is a teacher’s union representative and planning a march in support of working conditions and pay. The government wants it stopped.
It’s not a spoiler to reveal that soon after, Larry joins the increasing numbers of the ‘disappeared’ – men, women and children who are whisked away and not seen again. For almost the entirety of the book we are with Eilish, coping on her own as best she can while the restrictions and brutalities increase around her. For a long time she tries to convince her family (and herself) that all will be fine, that their father will return soon.
Eventually she has to admit that everything is far from alright.
There are echoes of dystopian novels like Brave New World or 1984, especially with the way the regime uses a kind of ‘doublespeak’ to present its own version of reality to the people, and the ramping up of violence as the country falls apart.
Eilish, it is really quite simple, the NAP is trying to change what you and I call reality; they want to muddy it like water, if you say one thing is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true – this is an old idea, of course, it is really nothing new, but you are watching it happen in your own time and not in a book.
Prophet Song pp20-21Again, what does that remind you of in the world right now?
Eilish is a completely believable character. We can only applaud her heroic efforts to keep family and home together while the social and civil systems that we all rely on, become unglued.
We are also privy to her agonies about deciding whether to stay or to get out while they can, and understand all the reasons why a family can’t just up and go: financial, not wanting to leave an elderly vulnerable relative, or a lack of appropriate paperwork to legally leave.
The narrative style is fast and furious, long sentences with minimal punctuation, sentences often running into each other. It invokes a sense of panic, of events unfolding at a pace too fast to absorb and impossible to control. There are also passages of beautiful prose:
She sits before the laptop on the kitchen table adrift and unbecome, the night borne through the open window, the city murmuring to the dreaming trees.
p117The ending is ambiguous, allowing each reader to decide what happens to Eilish and her little family.
The genius of the novel is its setting: readers are plunged into the realities of the reasons why people do choose to leave and become asylum seekers. But this is Ireland, in the modern day; the characters are Westernised people who speak English. If we are like them, we relate to them. The back cover blurb includes this: How far would you go to save your family? I recall this line on Tshirts and posters in support of people’s right to seek asylum here in Australia. This novel takes us there, to the reaons why, without being didactic or trite.
It is a terrifying book, but I found it propulsive and absorbing. And so, so timely.
Prophet Song was published by OneWorld in 2023.
What would you change? ‘Time and Time Again’ by Ben Elton
I have often fantasised about time travel. The idea of returning to the past is so intriguing: to be able to see, hear and experience this world as it was before my own time is an incredibly attractive thought. I would of course, go with a travel kit containing three essential items: a way of returning instantly to my own time; an extra large packet of paracetamol; and at least two full courses of antibiotics. There are things about the modern era I would not sacrifice even for the thrill of travelling through time.
Ben Elton’s time-travel novel allowed me to indulge this fantasy for while. An enjoyable read which, while mostly light in tone, deals with some darker themes as well. It also poses very thought-provoking questions, summarised on the book’s front cover:
If you had one chance to change history…
Where would you go?
What would you do?
Who would you kill?Hugh Stanton, the novel’s protagonist, has been tasked with exactly this: to return to June 1914 and carry out two actions that will prevent the outbreak of World War I. In doing so, the mission’s designers believe he will also prevent many of the other human-created catastrophes of the twentieth century which followed the Great War, including the Second World War.
Sounds simple, right? Perhaps not ‘easy’ but surely, preventing the consequences of the first World War (such as the rise of fascism in a weakened Germany) will mean the world would not propelled onto the second one?
Hugh is a skilled operative, ex-military, educated, with compassion but ruthless when required…There are some hiccups but he does succeed…
…and that’s when the totally unforseen consequences of fiddling with time and past events roar to life.
The novel is a mix of speculative fiction, thriller, and historical fiction, …peopled by some ‘real life’ historical figures and events, all with intriguing twists.
It left me with an impulse to rewatch some Star Trek episodes – you know, the ones where they go on about ‘time-space continuum’ and the ‘Prime Directive’?
I also had a feeling that no matter which bit of time we might choose to adjust if we could, it’s humans that we really can’t change – and that given our natures, humans will continue to create catastrophes for ourselves, no matter what.
I can’t say much more about the plot without giving spoilers. I will say that if you know a bit of modern history and like books that ask ‘What if?’ you’ll enjoy Time and Time Again.
It was published in 2014 by Penguin Random House.
Time is a river…’There are Rivers in the Sky’ by Elif Shafak
This is a hard book to pin down. It’s part historical novel, part call to action for the survival of Earth’s rivers and waterways. It’s definitely a saga, incorporating several timelines and character arcs. There’s a little bit of magical realism, a dollop of science, plus social commentary, poetry and philosophy. It took me a few chapters to fully engage with it, but once I did I was hooked.
It begins in ancient Mesopotamia in the fabled city of Nenevah, with an educated and cultured, but ruthlessly cruel ruler, who is entranced by the legendary poem The Epic of Gilgamesh. As a single raindrop from an approaching storm falls into his hair, he commands that his former mentor and teacher be put to an agonising death for supposed treason against him. The raindrop ascends into the sky where it will bide its time, ‘waiting to return to this troubled earth again…and again. Water remembers. It is humans who forget.’ (p18)
These are the themes that are woven into the book’s several storylines; they dance around each other before coming together in its final pages: the essential nature of water to Earth and those who live here; the power of story, of poetry and language; the choices that humans make in our time on the planet.
There is Arthur, a boy born into poverty and mud on the banks of the Thames in 1840, who goes on to encounter the ancient clay tablets of Mesopotamia held in the British Museum and learns to decipher their strange cuneiform writing, stumbling across segments of the Gilgamesh poem as he does so.
There is Narin, a child of the Yazidi sect living alongside the ancient Tigris River in 2014, who travels with her Grandmother to visit their spiritual homeland, only to be plunged into persecution and war.
And there is Zaleekhah, a young woman who moves into a houseboat on the Thames in London in 2018, nursing a broken heart from a failed marriage, along with old hurts from a childhood tragedy. She is a hydrologist, studying the health and behaviour of rivers around the world.
What these three disparate people have in common is the centrality of water to their fates. Rivers, and two in particular – the Tigris and the Thames – feature throughout the novel. The lifestyles, customs, religious beliefs, legends and languages of those who have lived alongside these rivers across thousands of years, are referenced, giving a fascinating insight into topics that I had not known much about previously. This is done through stories – the lives and actions of three in particular, along with a wide cast of secondary characters.
There is some gorgeous writing throughout and so many notable passages that I had a great deal of trouble choosing just one to quote. Here is a beautiful metaphor that, I think, draws together some of the themes of this novel:
Time is a river that meanders, branching out into tributaries and rivulets, depositing sediments of stories along its shores in the hope that someday, someone, somewhere, will find them…
We carve our dreams into objects, large or small. The emotions we hold but fail to honour, we try to express through the things we create, trusting that they will outlive us when we are gone, trusting that they will carry something of us through the layers of time, like water seeping through rocks. It is our way of saying to the next generations, those we will never get to meet, ‘Remember us.’
There are Rivers in the Sky p456There are Rivers in the Sky was written by British Turkish novelist Elif Shafak and published in 2024 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK.
‘Wings Over Valletta’ by Tracy Cook
In my four visits to Malta, my husband’s homeland, I have not yet made it to the Lascaris War Rooms. After reading this historical novel set during the appalling bombardment of the Maltese islands during WWII, I will make sure to visit this site of global significance next time.
Why global significance? Because tiny Malta is located in a spot in the Mediterranean Sea of such strategic importance that whoever controlled it, had a huge advantage during wartime. As a result, the people of Malta endured raids by both Italian and German planes, the islands becoming the most bombed places in the whole war.
Under British control, the authorities set up a command centre deep beneath the capital Valletta, utilising tunnels dug centuries earlier by the order of Knights who then ruled the islands. This is where novelist Tracy Cook set much of the action in her story. She chose to tell of the heroic efforts of the ‘plotters’, Maltese and English women who took on the vital work of plotting air battles and missions.
We have probably all seen footage of plotters in Britain, who showed the movements of enemy and Allied planes by pushing markers around huge maps, allowing those responsible for battle strategy to get a visual representation of what was happening. This was well before the age of digital screens and instant information transmission as we have today. In Malta, the women who did this work were not employed by the RAF. Rather, they were civilian women recruited from towns and villages across the islands.
The Ops Room, Ladscaris War Rooms. Source: ‘Historia Magazine’ https://historiamag.com/women-siege-malta/ They worked long hours in difficult physical conditions under immense pressure. At the end of a wearying shift, they faced even more stressful conditions when back above ground: the destruction of their homes, local services, constant air raid sirens requiring a fast exit to the nearest shelter. They worried about their families, friends, neighbours…Sworn to secrecy about their work, they were unable to share their worries with anyone outside.
Wings Over Valletta portrays all this through the eyes of the protagonist Kitty Campbell, whose father is a senior figure in the British Navy in Malta. Kitty is at home in Malta, with local friends and a job, until the war interrupts her normal life. It is then she signs up for work as a plotter and descends into the War Room tunnels for her first shift.
The enormous challenges faced by the Maltese people are skillfully portrayed: loss and heartache; hunger as the seige bit hard; anxiety over a possible German invasion. The internal political divisions are also shown: Malta had been a British colony for over 150 years and even in wartime, there were people agitating for independence, which was eventually achieved in 1964. Yet the country as a whole was awarded the George Cross for their bravery in 1942: the only nation to have ever been so collectively honoured.
Kitty nurses her own private loss and heartache: a child she unwillingly gave up for adoption years before, and her determination to find this little girl. She also faces betrayal from people she trusts and the hurt of knowing she’d been lied to. Like all the women plotters in the War Rooms, she has to find a way to navigate her own problems while staying focused and strong in her mission to help the war effort.
When she meets a British flying officer, romance blossoms, which adds to the story but doesn’t detract from the themes of danger, worry and commitment to duty .
This book is an emotional testament and tribute to the courage and tenacity of the people of Malta. It’s also chock full of references to Maltese lifestyle, food, culture and language, resulting in a wonderful portrayal of a tiny country which played a very big role on the world stage.
If you’d like to find out more about this amazing chapter of WWII history, you can read more about the Lascaris War Rooms here.
Wings Over Valletta was published by Allison & Busby Publishers in 2026.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a review copy.The tragedy of war: ‘When Sleeping Women Wake’ by Emma Pei Yin
‘When sleeping women wake, mountains move.‘
This is the kind of historical fiction that has me turning immediately to the Author’s Note, and then searching for more information on the events and places depicted, as I read.
I knew next to nothing about the fate of Hong Kong Chinese under the brutal occupation by the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII, and this novel (the first by Australian-Hong Kong Chinese author Emma Pei Yin) certainly whet my appetitie to learn more.
It follows three women through the war; their stories and eventual fates connected but separated for a time after the invasion of their home.
Mingzhu is married to a wealthy businessman, leading a luxurious but unsatisfying life. As First Wife, she adores her daughter Qiang but must endure the taunts of her husband’s concubine with whom he has a son. Mingzhu is intelligent and strong-willed and to ensure her daughter has opportunities that were denied to her, she chooses a compassionate and well educated English man to tutor Qiang as the girl grows into young adulthood.
Biyu is her companion and maid, who came into Mingzhu’s family when Mingzhu herself was born. Loving and loyal, Biyu has devoted her life to her mistress and will do anything to protect her and young Qiang.
Qiang dreams of more: an education, a profession…and when the war hits, she dreams of fighting to protect her home and family.
But when the Japanese Army descends on Hong Kong, the three women are separated. Each endure hardship and witness unspeakable acts of cruelty, alongside courage and kindness, sometimes from unexpected sources.
The story traces the development of the East River Column, a group of resistance fighters. This part of the novel is based on a real group whose acts of sabotage, theft of weapons, rescue of downed Allied pilots and victims of the Japanese Army, all played a part to hinder the invaders in their goal of complete domination of Asia. It’s a thrilling story, underlaid with the real human tragedy of war, represented by Mingzhu, Biyu and Qiang and those they encounter.
These three women also represent some of the best attributes of the human instinct for survival, loyalty, love and courage. While the novel doesn’t have a stereotypical ‘happy ending’, it does offer hope and a profound respect for those caught up in suffering at the hands of others.
When Sleeping Women Wake was published in 2025 by Hachette Australia.
Flipping the script: ‘Looking from the North’ by Henry Reynolds
Have you ever seen a map of the world that is not the standard Mercator-type, but which depicts the continents and their positions in a way that is more true to life? If so, you’ll know that slightly unsettling feeling of gazing at a depiction of our planet that just looks weird, or so different to what you are used to, as it challenges deep assumptions about world geography.
Reading Looking from the North felt a bit like that for me. Having been born, raised and educated (and lived the majority of my life) in the southeast of Australia, my ‘take’ on our national story was, I see now, very much from a ‘looking from the south’ perspective. This book shook that up in a mildly unsettling, but also refreshing, way.
Historian Henry Reynolds is known for his truth-telling take on Australia’s national stories, and this book continues in that vein, with his hope that this nuanced view can shift mainstream Australian thinking, to reassess our story of colonisation but also understand our distinctive variant of decolonisation. (p5) He traverses events in Australia from the British act of colonisation in 1788 through to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and everything in between.
Some of the major themes and events he considers really made me stop and think, including:
- Colonisation happened in two distinct phases, the second of which took place largely in the vast ’empty’ centre and north and played out very differently from the earlier colonisation of the south. Because the British government had handed over control of the new colonies of Queensland (1859) and the Northern Territory (to the colony of South Australia in 1863), moral responsibility to First Nations people therein was also handed over.
This is why the settlement of northern Australia is different. It was an Australian, not a British venture. For better or worse it is our responsiblity. We cannot escape from it or from its latter-day consequences with which we still live. (p15) - ‘Opening up’ land in the north for white settlers carried with it the same devastating consquences for the First Nations there. The hunger of Europeans – for land, gold, ownership – was the same as it had been half a century before, but the way it was assuaged sometimes differed from the south.
In both cases, though, The insouciance of both government and settlers was staggering. So too was their ignorance. They knew so little about the country itself and the people they were so ruthlessly usurping. (p23) - There were killing times (sometimes known as ‘frontier wars’ or appropriately, the ‘Australian wars’) in both north and south, though the environments, the demographics and the trajectories differed. But the litany of resistance, violent reprisals, and hideous atrocities are depressingly similar. In some places peaceful resolution, of sorts, did eventuate, though they tend to be less well-known: The attempt by both settler and First Nations communities to manage the process of reconciliation as the era of open warfare came to an end has rarely been studied by Australian historians. (p39)
- The pastoral industry in the tropical north was completely dependent on the resident First Nations workforce. (p62) Though this fact did not translate into decent payment or working conditions.
- Readers of David Marr’s forensic and harrowing work Killing for Country (2023) (my review) will no doubt agree with Reynold’s view that the story of the Native Police represents one of the most egregious, shameless chapters in the history of Australian colonisation. (p69)
- When Australia became a federated nation, a growing national obsession with racial purity led to the disgracefully long-lived policy of White Australia, under which people of Asian, Pacific Islander, and other ‘non-white’ backgrounds were ruthlessly expelled or barred from the country. This included many who had made their homes and had families in northern centres like Cairns, Darwin, Thursday Island, and Mackay. It also included labourers who had been brought here (some willingly, some less so) in the so-called ‘Blackbirding’ era, to work on sugar plantations. Not surprisingly, the expulsions and bans also had devastating effects on the economies and communities involved.
- This period also coincided with a convenient sort of amnesia about even the recent past, because The new nation hungered for worthy foundation stories to nurture collective pride. Peaceful conquest of country was a far more appealing story than bloody conquest for the land. (pp77-78)
- The White Australia policy did not die a much-deserved death until 1973. By then world opinion on issues of race was shifting and moves in international spaces, such as the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965) pushed national governments to enact laws to protect citizens from discrimination.
- Meanwhile, the Indigenous land rights movements were gathering force in Australia. A rocky road; but the book outlines the Yirrkala Bark Petitions (discussed in Clare Wright’s wonderful 2024 Naku Dharuk (my review), the Mabo and the Wik cases as significant in the gains made in the second half of the twentieth century.
I have listed so many points here to show just how much Reynolds includes in this book, which is nevertheless a slim and easy-to-read publication. If you enjoy a book that will teach you something new, give a different perspective on familar events, and continue the important work of truth-telling about our nation’s history, you will enjoy Looking from the North.
Looking from the North was published by NewSouth in 2025.
- Colonisation happened in two distinct phases, the second of which took place largely in the vast ’empty’ centre and north and played out very differently from the earlier colonisation of the south. Because the British government had handed over control of the new colonies of Queensland (1859) and the Northern Territory (to the colony of South Australia in 1863), moral responsibility to First Nations people therein was also handed over.
A child, a family, a play: ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell
First published in 2020, this historical novel by award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell is generating a resurgence of interest due to the release of the film adaptation in cinemas. I plan to see it soon and wanted to read the novel first; always my preference if possible, as the original book (in my opinion) always offers a richer, deeper story than a film can tell in its more time-limited format.
I wasn’t disappointed. As you can probably tell from its title, Hamnet is an imagining of the origin story of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. And what a rich, deep story it is.
The author focuses on the members of the playwright’s family, especially his wife, called Agnes in the book, and their three children, Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet. Shakespeare himself is, if anything, more of a secondary character, in that while his emotional arc is crucial to the story, he is never named and he comes and goes physically throughout, while the narrative centres on events in his home town and within his birth family and that of his wife.
I’m sure it is no spoiler to say that the crux of the novel is the death of Hamnet, still a child, and the effect this tragedy has on all concerned. The intense grief of the boy’s family, especially his parents and twin, is expressed in different ways by each individual. A family already under pressure, tested to breaking point, despite the deep love that exists there. Will this marriage survive? How does each person cope with the unimaginable but all too common tragedy of a child’s death? These are the questions that run through the book, keeping us engaged and committed.
The author has brought to brilliant life the Tudor-era setting: the sights, smells, daily lives in a quiet town like Stratford-on-Avon and in the busy, overwhelming city of London, where Hamnet’s father goes to pursue his quest for a career in the burgeoning world of Elizabethan theatre. Descriptions are deep, detailed, almost forensic: the journey of a single flea from a far off port, across land and oceans to the home where it bites Judith, resulting in her almost-death from bubonic plague and Hamnet’s subsequent illness, is startling in its specificity.
Within this vivid context the novel’s heart beats: love of a parent for their child, love of a twin for their paired sibling, love of a writer for their craft, love of a couple for their other.
And so a famous play was born: its story of overwhelming, maddening grief, echoing across the centuries to readers and theatre-goers today.
He can manage these: histories and comedies. He can carry on. Only with them can he forget who he is and what has happened. They are safe places to stow his mind (and no one else on stage with him, not one of the other players, his closest friends, will know that he finds himself looking out, every evening, over the watching crowd, in search of a particular face, a boy with a slightly crooked smile and a perpetually surprised expression; he scans the audience minutely, carefully, because he still cannot fathom that his son could have just gone; he must be somewhere; all he has to do is find him).
Hamnet ebook loc 254 of 310Hamnet was published by Tinder Press in 2020. I read the ebook version on Kindle.
The film adaptation is in cinemas as I write.For the adventurous ones: ‘The Cherayroos: Underground Rules’ by S.P.Doran
The Cherayroos: Underground Rules is all about an adventurous explorer from a little community beneath our feet.
Chie lives in CherayrooVille, beneath the WhisperDeep forest. The village is enclosed in the ancient winding roots of the Tree of Solace, where little fluffy creatures with twiggy legs and arms and big, saucer eyes (and very strange noses) dwell happily.
They obey the Rootscript of Rules which define how they are to live, study, and work. The most important one is that they are never to leave the village – which is okay for most, but not for Chie, as he is keen to explore the Above and prove his bravery.
What follows is a series of adventures as Chie sets off to find the way out of CherayrooVille and see what lies Above. He meets other creatures, some helpful, some grumpy and some plain scary, but in the end he realises that, while adventures are exciting, the rules are there to protect him and others, and really, all he had to do was ask to make his dream come true.
This is a lovely book for very early readers or to be read aloud. The text is nice and big, on pages that resemble parchment or an old manuscript, complimenting the detailed, richly coloured illustrations. The chapters are short and the narrative moves along at a brisk pace to keep youngsters involved.
Perhaps in homage to Tolkein, there is a terrific map (reminiscent of The Hobbit) and snippets of Cherayroo words and phrases used, with a glossary at the back. I confess I found these a bit confusing due to them all starting with ‘ch’ – but that’s probably just me. At the back the author has included some interesting questions for children to consider about the story and its world.
The book is all about exploring, being curious and adventurous, and encouraging youngsters to observe and ask questions about the world around them. I admire writers who work to get their ideas out there and I hope this one continues with this world and the characters he has created, in future books.
I could also see a fabulous animated adaption of this story appealing to young fans!The Cherayroos: Underground Rules is available in ebook and print versions on Amazon, and via the author’s website.
My thanks to the author for a review copy.Library treasures: ‘A Waltz for Matilda’ by Jackie French
I’ve had this one on my shelf for several years now, picked up at a street library, and finally had a chance to read it. So glad I did! First published in 2010, it is an imaginative re-telling of the origin story of arguably Australia’s most famous (and certainly beloved) folk song, Waltzing Matilda.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolabah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
‘You’ll come a’waltzing Matilda with me.’In this story, Matilda is a girl living with her very sick mother in an inner-city slum, working long hours in a jam factory to try to make ends meet. When her mother dies, she is left alone to fend for herself in an unkind world.
She goes in search of her long-lost father, a man her mother described as a ‘golden man’, though the couple had separated years earlier. The quest takes her to a drought-stricken isolated sheep farm on the outskirts of a small town, neighbouring a large run established by a squatter, Mr Drinkwater.
Her father welcomes her into his life but because of the drought, is about to leave his farm and go ‘on the track’ as a swagman, searching for work as he travels. He agrees that Matilda can accompany him, because where else is she to go?
Their journey together is cut short, though. Mr Drinkwater traps her father as they camped by a billabong, with troopers arriving to arrest him on a trumped-up charge of sheep stealing. He drowns (no spoiler here, the song says it all) and Matilda is once again on her own.
She decides to go back to her father’s farm and try to make a go of it, with the help of several others who come to help in honour of her father’s memory. He was a man much admired by the shearers and other workers in the district, because of his activism around shearer’s rights and the movement towards a national federated nation, able to pass laws to protect the rights of the more vulnerable in the community.
As always with a Jackie French novel, the story weaves in several important historical events and themes: the crippling1890s drought and subsequent economic depression; movements for better working conditions, women’s suffrage and temperance; conflict between wealthy squatters and the indigenous people of the land they stole.
It also deals unblinkingly with the racism of the time, the way that the move towards a united nation of Australia was motivated by ideals but also by self -interest and racist attitides, especially towards Aboriginal people and the Chinese. I love how this author does not shy away from the more difficult parts of our nation’s history.
A Waltz for Matilda is a big story, and book one of the ‘Matilda’ series. It’s very readable, with moments of both humour and sadness, and characters you can care about. Matilda is an admirable figure and it is a delight to watch her growth from orphaned girl to capable young woman. Best of all, it’s a wonderful way to introduce some important history to young Australian readers. Perfect for middle grade to young adult readers, this (no longer young) reader recommends it highly!
A Waltz for Matilda was published by Angus & Robertson in 2010.
Unquenchable spirit: ‘Three Minutes for a Dog…My Life in an Iron Lung’ by Paul R Alexander
Imagine being six years old, coming in after a day spent playing outside in the heat of a Texan summer’s day. You are hot, much hotter than normal even on a warm day like this. You have a sudden, terrible headache. Then your neck becomes stiff and painful.
Your mother notices and you see the fear – no, terror – in her face.
It is 1952 and the childhood disease called polio has been stalking the land, including your neighbourhood, striking down children of all ages without warning. You have become its latest victim.
The next two years are a blur of agony, misery and confusion in a hospital ward alongside numberless other polio patients. Because of the damage inflicted by the virus on your little body, you are now almost completely paralysed. Your lungs are unable to function on their own and you now exist in a machine known as an ‘iron lung’ which does the breathing for you. The only part of your body that protrudes from this metal cylinder is your head. An emergency tracheostomy has left you unable to speak, so you can’t call for help or to ask for any of your basic needs to be met. Many times a day you nearly choke to death.
Finally your parents decide to take you home. They do so knowing that you may only have a short time to live, as the doctors have suggested, but they firmly believe that home, with their loving care, is a better place for you. There are too many polio patients in the hospital, too few nursing staff. They worry that you will die there and without their love to surround you, what kind of death would that be?
This is the beginning of Paul Alexander’s memoir of his extraordinary life, published in 2023. Obviously he did not die, or not for a long while. When he finally passed away in 2024, he was the person who’d spent the longest time in an iron lung in the world.
In the book, Paul states that one of the main reasons for writing it was to help the public understand the dangers of polio, which has not (as is commonly thought) been eradicated worldwide. Indeed, given the trend in the USA and other parts of the world against childhood and adult vaccinations that protect against these types of devastating illnesses, it’s easy to understand that impulse. Do we really want to see whole communities live in fear of silent killers like polio once again?
As a six year old Paul did not understand what was happening to him. He could only endure. Gradually he was able to realise that he had to make a plan for his life, to work out what he could control and what he couldn’t.
A care worker encouraged him to try to learn a breathing technique colloquially called ‘frog breathing’ that would allow him to spend time outside of the iron lung, thus enabling him to taste some aspects of a more normal life. It’s hard to do and requires a lot of instruction and practice. To encourage him, she promised that if he could sustain three minutes of frog-breathing on his own, she would give him a puppy. Eventually, he won that puppy – and it later became the evocative title of his book.
Polio robbed this little boy of early schooling, but with the support of his parents he was able to be home-schooled and graduated high school – at a time when formal home schooling and adjustments for students with special needs were pretty much unheard of. He then completed studies at university, finishing up with a law degree and utilising his education in a career in law.
None of this could have happened without the steadfast love and commitment of his remarkable parents. To bring home a child requiring 24-hour care is one thing. However Paul’s medical needs were complex and the machinery that kept him alive even more so. There was a steep learning curve for everyone involved. Paul’s father improvised a communication device using a stick which Paul manipulated in his mouth; later this morphed into a way to write his university work, and later still, he typed his manuscript on a computer with a device that had its origins in his father’s simple idea from decades before.
The book also pays tribute to the many other caregivers and friends that played vital roles in Paul’s life. There is a lost romance which is a sad tale; possibly something the author never truly recovered from.
The writing is laboured at times, sometimes repetitive, not always easy to fall into the narrative. But as a heartfelt and passionate plea for understanding of the lives of others, it’s a story worth paying attention to.
And as an example of an unquenchable human spirit, I can’t think of a better one.
Three Minutes for a Dog…My Life in an Iron Lung was published in 2023 by FriesenPress.
