The title, Kintsugi, is a metaphoric insight into the author’s perspective on her own life. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of using (particularly) gold powder to repair broken pottery. The result is often more beautiful than the original. This is a series of essays featuring personal reflection, family history and literary references. Most are in the first person, although some significant ones are written in a dispassionate third person and some even ask (plead) for the reader’s response.
O’Rourke’s early life was dominated by a father who dispensed insults rather than love. She was the last of three daughters. Her father expected a boy. She had his Mediterranean features but that was never going to be enough. His disappointment escalated his already volatile temper.
Marie strove to be a ‘good girl’. She recognises this as naive, submissive, fruitless behaviour. She also aims for perfection, all the while realising it can’t be achieved.
Her mind opened at university, where study centred on feminist readings, and where her love affair with George Eliot’s Middlemarch began. Despite this, she still yearned for romantic (patriarchal) love, and was engaged before her graduation. Diving ever deeper into the patriarchy, she converted to Catholicism for her marriage. She’s aware of her own contradictions, where she’s a ‘[s]trange mishmash of feminist ideals and conservative dreams’.
O’Rourke raises her own kids, and eventually rekindles her purpose by pursuing her PhD. The literary references are apposite, and her appreciation of great writing is evident.
Devastatingly, her sister Mia died in her 30s. Her father, who left the family home to consolidate an affair, later contracted cancer. O’Rourke’s writing – poetic with vivid imagery – is haunted by this sense of loss.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Entranced by the power of words from birth, Marie O’Rourke spent many years reading, analysing, and teaching the stories of others before working up the nerve to start shaping her own. That story culminated in a PhD from Curtin University, where her research and writing pushed against the tradition of first-person, past-tense, chronological, narrative memoir, hoping to capture the shape-shifting nature of memory and identity.
Marie’s memoir was shortlisted for the 2022 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award and her essays have been published in many respected national and international journals such as a/b, Axon, Essay Daily, Meanjin, Meniscus, New Writing, TEXT and Westerly. Teaching creative writing and literary studies at Curtin University, and now at St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls.
Marie is passionate about helping future generations of readers and writers to see and feel all that words can carry.
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