All the Words We Know is the most magnificent twist on the mystery novel, with the narration coming from a woman with dementia. It’s mostly a stream of consciousness, conflating the physical mystery of the care home with the psychological mystery of a dementia sufferer’s mind, while exploring the loss and gaining/regaining of memory. The writing is beautifully nurturing.
In the dementia ward of an aged care home, Rose thinks that something nefarious is afoot. Her friend is found dead in the carpark, her son is cagey about her accounts, her daughter puts her head down on Rose’s bathtub and sighs a lot, the Angry Nurse wanders the corridors with a pillow Rose believes is to smother patients, the nice boy who mops the floors is in trouble for talking to the residents, and the ‘Scare Manager’ is showing off his new gold accessories, while smarmily complimenting Rose.
Rose may or may not be her name. Looking at a photo on her dresser, she begins to remember the ‘older fellow’ as her second husband. He suffered from dementia as well and, as he forgot her name, she looked around the plants in their precious garden and called herself Rose. She also begins to remember her first husband and thinks she wasn’t a good mother to her children. When she eventually remembers the password to her accounts – with the help of the nice boy – she has the key to unlocking the home’s mystery.
The novel’s wordplay and consequent humour is masterful. Readers may never see lorikeets again without automatically thinking ‘lunatics’. Rose muses that ‘Words are so …’ and never has such a universe of meaning been contained in an ellipsis. Truly, wonderfully, genre-bustingly magnificent.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruce has always written. For three decades he taught English in Secondary Schools throughout Queensland. He survived, and now lives and writes on the far south coast of New South Wales, by the shores of Wallaga Lake.
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