AustLit

'As a young journalist, I wrote a lot about trauma. The federal Sex Discrimination Act was less than a decade old when I first joined a newsroom in the early 1990s and its passage helped broaden the public discussion of intimate crimes such as sexual assault and domestic violence, previously considered verboten in polite society.' (Introduction)

'Early in The Girls, Chloe Higgins recounts her ­father’s reaction when he learns his two other children were killed in the car accident that has put him in hospital. “It is almost cartoonish, the way his mouth spreads open and his eyes push together, his forehead scrunching in on itself … ” Higgins writes of Maurice, who was driving the family car when it swerved into oncoming traffic and burst into flames, daughters Carlie and Lisa still trapped inside.' (Introduction)

‘What’s the good of thinking of misery when you’re ­already miserable?” That question from Anne Frank sparked some intense debates when we were studying her diary at high school. What was the value of examining the travails of another? Would we learn about life’s greater meaning? Could it help us keep our daily challenges in perspective?As guidebooks for resilience, the three books under review fit into that thinking, telling acutely personal tales of how to survive, and possibly even thrive, in the face of enormous personal trauma.' (Introduction)

'First, a confession. With these three books, all written by women for women about overcoming personal and collective struggles, I felt not fist-pumping solidarity but jaded reticence. Worse, what sprang to mind unprompted was a scene from Sex and the City, the HBO hit that began as an irreverent romp about four independent and sexually adventurous friends in 1990s New York before gradually disintegrating into a tired and predictable formula: happiness = 1 boyfriend + 3 credit cards x unlimited designer labels.' (Introduction)