- Bohemian Negligence, by Bertie Blackman. Allen & Unwin, $29.99.
Our language possesses no high-falutin', intellectual equivalent of the French word, "flaneur". A flaneur is someone who observes, reflects, re-visits as she wanders along, usually doing so in an amusingly wry, affectionately dry manner. Here Bertie Blackman, a musician, writer and artist, has adopted the techniques and perspective of a flaneur to an account of her own childhood.
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Blackman, daughter of the renowned artist Charles Blackman, offers a kaleidoscopic view of a childhood "full of cracks. Full of light and full of dark. But it was full of love." Blackman recounts incidents from her childhood in the present tense, albeit with the benefit of wider experience, hindsight and perhaps a few second thoughts.
The initial sections especially read like riffs, a bit disjointed, sometimes incomplete, but with each of them pushing the reader to think twice. A lyrical passage about how "reflecting and projecting, the moonlight screens films across the walls just for me", transmutes into a study of her father weeping as he pats his child to sleep. A query, "if you could touch your memories, how would they feel?", is answered first by a commentary on a blurry red dot.
Charles Blackman emerges frequently from the shadows, impersonating Dracula while boiling spaghetti, rescuing his burned daughter from a hot barbeque, pretending to be doing push-ups when Bertie wanders into the adults' bedroom. He educates his daughter about drawing by insisting, most graciously, that "we can use lines to make invisible worlds come alive". The issues with alcohol for this "irrepressible" father, "made of shadows and lines", are dealt with astringently, as is a case of abuse involving Bertie Blackman.
Adopting the point of view of a young girl is not synonymous with a naive or innocent take on life. Nor was it in Charles Blackman's "Schoolgirls" series. A new partner for her father is introduced uncharitably with "a gap between her teeth and a round face like a dinner plate".
Elsewhere, Blackman's gift for relating events - to moods, to metaphors and to images - is deployed more gently. For instance, her feet tap up a tune while talking up a staircase.
Even the intimate family anecdotes in Blackman's story are suffused with sadness. Unqualified, childlike pleasure is reserved for a Yothu Yindi performance and Sydney's Mardi Gras, a chance to learn "being your most fabulous you". Blackman's grandparents are treated most charitably, with one seeking out "the perfect, blackest black" while the other carted around a dozen Veuve Cliquot in the boot of his car, "a case just in case". Bohemianism is often more fun than Blackman's bracing, confronting tale.
