She should be dead, but she remains miraculously alive.
Hamlet famously told Horatio that there were: “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” and the novel “Memories of a Brainless Girl” presents such a “heaven and earth” instance—a literary riff on that timeless theme.
The novel is a multi-level Aussie noir tapestry, weaving together three strands: a biological miracle, a portrait of dangerous institutional corruption, and a brutal murder mystery in a moody, shadowed landscape.
The setting of the story is a small town in 1980 rural Queensland—a region pejoratively known as Australia’s “Deep North”. It is a time of corruption in high and low places, and an era of fierce ideological battles between progressive and conservative forces.
At the heart of the narrative is nineteen-year-old Natalie, a young woman who lives with a catastrophic brain condition with only 10% of a normal brain—a true-life condition brought to the world in 1980 by Professor John Lorber from England. Yet, as with some of Professor Lorber’s cases, Natalie lives a normal life.
As Natalie processes the psychological impact of her confounding medical condition, she also confronts the collapse of her religious faith and her awakening sexuality. Yet above all this, she must resolve the ongoing torment that has dominated her life: the unsolved murder of her father.
In this thought-provoking and moving account told through a memorable gallery of intriguing shadowy characters, Natalie discovers that she, the “brainless” girl, may be the only one capable of perceiving the truth behind lies, in a world of secrets and temptations.
A noir mystery with a difference!
Written by John Summons, an Australian playwright whose works have been published by Cambridge University Press (UK), The Dramatic Publishing Company (USA), and Currency Press (AUS). His novel ‘Memories of a Brainless Girl’ is his latest work.
