Reading Note 86: I first heard of Koraly Dimitriadis in the early-2010s when I came across her Twitter discussions. I looked up her books and saw them described as “portraits of life”, “ghosts of the old country”, “emotional self-examination” and at that time, I just couldn’t engage, purely based on my own personal situation where I was overwhelmed with life demands that I couldn’t bear reading someone else’s take filled with gritty reality.

However, it is more than a decade later, the Greek-Australian Writers’ Festival is hosting Koraly Dimitriadis, and though I can’t really say that I am not busy, I am certainly not as overwhelmed by life’s demands as I used to be (the amazing liberation of no longer tending to the physical and emotional needs of teenagers while also working and studying)! So during the semester break, I sat down with Dimitriadis’s collection of short-stories The Mother Must Die and it had this deep, clawing impact upon me.

The opening story “They Put Me in my Grave” was an amalgam of so many Greek mothers’ voices I have encountered in my life, including my own mum. The mother in the story grieving the shame that is brought upon her life by her daughter divorcing her husband, refusing to acknowledge her daughter’s pain. The mother looking back at the betrothal remembering the couple’s “Promise” to her to stay together echoed my own mother telling my Anglo boyfriend (and now husband of nearly 30 years) that “it is better you kill me than shame my family with divorce”. In that first page, I felt ill at reading further but also damned if I didn’t as the writing was compelling.

Every short story is a telling of modern-day Australia where there is a negotiation of cultural expectations, personal grief and lost dreams. Of the 15 stories, the ones that stood out to me were “They Put Me in my Grave”, “Theo and Haroula”, the devastating “Smelly Francesco”, and “The Bridal Wars” where Tasha belligerently casts her vote following her father’s preferences, on the eve of finally becoming self-aware through her viewing a documentary on Fast Fashion, regretting her vote and seeing life and wedding processions through an ethical fashion lens – a lazy Saturday night watching TV changing Tasha’s life trajectory.

I absolutely loved this book which was felt so close to so many people I knew, including myself, but also so distanced from my own life. It was like a sliding door to a life I somehow avoided. Dimitriadis’s writing style mirrors so many Greek-Australian writers like Peter Polites and Will Kostakis who occasionally inject a local Greeklish (or is it Greenglish???) vernacular which makes each story accessible and personal.

Koraly Dimitriadis will be at the Greek-Australian Writers’ Festival on Sunday 27th of April. Buy tickets here: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1347314

I read a print copy of this book, borrowed from a NSW public library.

The Blurb from Koraly Dimitriadis’s publisher:

The fashion industry is killing the planet but I really need that new designer handbag… Her daughter is divorcing and she’s going to die because of it… The mother must be medicated… I’m in Australia but I just want to be in Cyprus… She’s never had an orgasm and still lives with her parents…Anything my boys want they get… He’s got a whole bank of chicks on his phone… Ever since I came to this country I been in bed… Until her children can get her the new drug for the MND, she will dream of her village in Greece…Conquests are about scoring the chicks, but he’s never going to turn out like his nonno… They never talked about what her uncle did again… The money made him go mad… My mummy is sad, she keeps talking about ‘court and custody’, but I’m going to take the potion and make everything better…

Broken people trying to make their way back to hope. Stories of identity, divorce, sexuality, parenting, domestic violence, and the working-class migrant experience. Bestselling poet Koraly Dimitriadis’s debut collection will transport you into the minds of disenfranchised characters, troubled men, children who live in two homes, and women trying to break free.