Cirrus@Austlit

'Childhood is a formative experience. And reading can be a transformative experience; between the lines and shelves of books there are spaces to inhabit and new ways to metamorphose. I found myself thinking about the contours of these experiences while reading Shannon Burns’ Childhood, which felt invigorating and courageous, at times breathtaking in the execution. Burns has the past interacting with the present with graceful uncertainty, tracing rifts and voids in memory. Often in life-writing there is a sense of mining the past, processing and refining its contents into a narrative that seems irrevocable and crystal-clear, leading to conclusions that point to redemption. Instead, many of the events detailed in Childhood remain uncertain due to the nature of their origin.' (Introduction)