Marie Darrieussecq - Tom is Dead

The title says it all: Tom is dead. It's repeated like a refrain throughout the book. Ten years after the four year old's death, Tom's mother, for the first time, spends a few minutes without thinking about him. In order not to forget again, she starts to write a journal.

Tom's mother is French, his father is British and his siblings grow up Australian. He dies one Bondi summer, but it isn't the iconic and mythologised Bondi that we know. It's alien, unfamiliar; a place where life ends. The mother's journal is the kind of drift of recollections and philosophical enquiry that only the French could get away with. Her mourning is bigger than the words that she has and it overshadows everything, including her husband and the two children that are still living. 

The reader isn't told how Tom died. His mother revisits the final hours and the days that follow, but always pulls away at the exact moment of his death. The repetition of certain facts is relentless and the grief is so palpable you can hardly believe that this is fiction. It's the desire to know exactly what happened that January afternoon rather than enjoyment of the subject material that keeps the reader going. Those who don't know what it's like to lose a child may not want to know. Tom is Dead isn't comfortable reading, but it is compelling. Nina Cullen

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