 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Velocity
By Mandy Sayer
Vintage $32.95
 This
high-energy (as the title suggests) follow-up to Mandy Sayer's autobiographical
Dreamtime Alice predates that memoir by tracing her childhood and early adolescence
with a struggling mother and absent father, drummer Gerry Sayer, whom she would
accompany on the American trip recounted in the second phase of her life story.
The tale begins when she was conceived 'roughly an hour after my father swallowed
a block of hash at a party for jazz musicians. He was just about to roll a joint
in the living room when a band of police began kicking down the front door in
their attempt to raid the house.'
Having swallowed the dope with a glass of beer, he avoided arrest and walked
home to the marital bed - her parents were still together - where the coupling
ended with his accurate pronouncement, 'Now that's a baby'.
At the age of three the child was given her first taste of beer, typifying
the unusual upbringing that lasted until 1979 when Sayer completed high school,
left home, such as it was, and moved from Melbourne to Sydney to be closer to
the father she had missed for many years.
Drawn to alcohol and unsupportive, sometimes abusive men, Sayer's impoverished
mother Betty was often absent, prompting the then nine-year old to wonder, 'Had
she fled into an entirely new life, unencumbered by a daughter? As I tied my shoelaces
my thoughts grew ever more fearful. She was unconscious in a gutter somewhere;
she was in hospital; perhaps she'd committed suicide or had even been murdered.'
Later, during a destructive relationship with a Muslim Lebanese named Hakkim,
to whom she had born a child, her mother did try to take her own life and was
rushed to intensive care.
Amidst her distress, Mandy, whom Hakkim had tried to sexually exploit, felt
her mother's dying might have one positive outcome: 'I would no longer have to
live with Hakkim, because he was only my mother's boyfriend and I knew it would
be illegal to grant him custody.'
So began their life of women's refuges and halfway houses, with her mother's
drinking continuing and finally the obsessive Hakkim tracking them down, resulting
in a court case.
In her mid-teens, Sayer took up with an arty crowd and began to build a life
that has seen her become the successful author of four novels and now one of the
more interesting accounts of life beyond the Australian dream.
• Mandy Sayer will be appearing at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival from
August 4-8. For tickets and information phone 6685 6262 or visit the website at
www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.
- Books reviewed are available at Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore.
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