AustLit

'Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner has won many awards since it was published in 2017, including the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Australian Book Industry Award General Non-Fiction Book of the Year.'  (Introduction)

'Dorothy’s front door wouldn’t open. So they took it off its hinges.

'[We] were confronted immediately by a wall of garbage, decades upon decades of accumulated detritus,” says Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner. Dorothy’s impenetrable house was in a wealthy suburb, not far from a cafe that made raw almond milk. Krasnostein had arrived there with Sandra Pankhurst, the 63-year-old owner and operator of Specialised Trauma Cleaning Services.' (Introduction)

'Sandra Pankhurst is no ordinary cleaner. The subject of Sarah Krasnostein’s biography, The Trauma Cleaner, this Melbourne businesswoman is one of the most extraordinary characters you will ever find in a work of non-fiction. Pankhurst’s company, Specialised Trauma Cleaners, deals with crime scenes, “unattended deaths” and hoarders’ houses. Staff in white plastic suits rip up sewage-drenched carpet, wipe bloodstains from walls, and dispose of decades of rubbish.' (Introduction)

'This is a book as multifaceted as its subject. It’s a meticulously put-together biography of a fastidiously groomed woman whose business it is to clean up after murder, suicide and hoarding messes. It’s a wondrous portrait of an inspiring character who has been, at various times in her life, the wife of a respectable man, the devoted lover of another, a rape survivor, a sex worker and drag queen with a pregnant girlfriend, a husband and father and a sadistically abused young boy. It’s an eloquent discourse on trauma, pain and ways of coping, or not. It’s a history of the law and policing in Victoria with regard to its LGBTQI community. It’s a jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing, some permanently disordered and others willed into creation. It’s the frequently surprising and sometimes funny story of a potty-mouthed transgender businesswoman and long-time Liberal Party supporter.' (Introduction)