The Things We Live With
Gemma Nisbet
The Things We Live With
Gemma Nisbet
A meditation on the burden and joy of inheritance, and the strange power of the objects and keepsakes that connect us
'This is how I became interested in things. In their strange pull and power; in the ways they hold on to us and we to them.'
After her father dies of cancer, Gemma Nisbet is inundated with keepsakes connected to his life by family and friends. As she becomes attuned to the ways certain items can evoke specific memories or moments, she begins to ask questions about the relationships between objects and people. Why is it so difficult to discard some artefacts and not others? Does the power exerted by precious things influence the ways we remember the past and perceive the future? As Nisbet considers her father's life and begins to connect his experiences of mental illness with her own, she wonders whether hanging on to 'stuff' is ultimately a source of comfort or concern.
Intimate and wide-ranging, The Things We Live With is a collection of essays about how we learn to live with the 'things' handed down in families which we carry throughout our lives - not only material objects, but also grief, memory, anxiety and depression. It's about notions of home and restlessness, inheritance and belonging - and, above all, the ways we tell our stories to ourselves and other people.
Review
Stephanie King
The Things We Live With by Gemma Nisbet is a pensive exploration of memory and family staged through her encounters with everyday objects. Nisbet is a regular contributor to the West Australian, and her work has been published in various Australian publications such as Westerly, Australian Book Review and TEXT. This is her first collection of essays.
The Things We Live With is a collection of personal essays, written in the style of a memoir. They focus principally on the generational interweaving of Nisbet’s family: of her father, and her father’s father. Of their history of mental health, cancer, and other attributes passed down alongside Nisbet’s collection of objects belonging to these men. Nisbet finds the stories in the colour of her baby teeth, in the tourist magnets on her fridge, in the strange objects left behind by her dad – but they are not always the stories you expect them to be.
Nisbet’s writing is rich and vivid, and conjures up a tender history of her family. I found that some of the essays felt stronger than others in their engagement with other literature about objects and how we relate to them, however they were all were beautifully engaging, particularly when discussing her family and the unique mystique objects have in our lives. ‘Baby Teeth’ is a dreamy ramble through Nisbet’s childhood landscape, while the titular essay ‘The Things We Live With, Part I’ delves into Nisbet’s work as a travel writer, alongside her experiences of mental health, by questioning the boundaries between home and away, well and unwell.
I would recommend this book to those who love creative nonfiction, and anyone looking for memoir writing that isn’t afraid to experiment with form and style. To the hoarders among us, to those afraid to let go, to those more than ready – these essays are for you.
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