PublishedTransit Lounge, May 2019 |
ISBN9781925760200 |
FormatSoftcover, 272 pages |
Dimensions22.9cm × 15.2cm |
When she is four years
old Amra Pajalic realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving but
sometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. She is
frequently sent to hospital and Amra and her brother are passed around to
family friends and foster homes, and for a time live with their grandparents in
Bosnia.
At sixteen Amra ends up
in the school counsellor's office for wagging school. She finally learns the
name for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolar
disorder. Amra becomes her mother's confidante and learns the extraordinary
story of her life: when she was fifteen years old Fatima visited family friends
only to find herself in an arranged marriage. At sixteen she was a migrant, a
mother, and mental patient.
Surprisingly funny, Things Nobody Knows But Me is a tender
portrait of family and migration, beautifully told. It captures a wonderful
sense of bicultural place and life as it weaves between St Albans in suburban
Australia and Bosanska Gradiska in Bosnia. Ultimately it is the heartrending story of a mother and daughter bond fractured
and forged by illness and experience. Fatima emerges as a remarkable but
wounded woman who learns that her daughter really loves her.
