Reviewed by Roslyn McFarland
Tremor
by Sonya Voumard
Finlay Lloyd Publishers
October 2024, Paperback, 129 pages, ISBN: 9780645927023
First, a shameful admission: I’d never heard of Finlay Lloyd Publishers, let alone their annual 20/40 Prize. But having read Sonya Voumard’s Tremor, a highly engaging, short-form memoir and an admirable winner of this year’s non-fiction 20/40 Prize, both are now on my radar.
On their website, Finlay Lloyd describes themselves as ‘an independent, non-profit publisher, founded in 2005, dedicated to encouraging imaginative and challenging writing, to subtly innovative design and to celebrating the pleasures of print on paper in an electronic age.’
More power to them!
I also didn’t have a clue about dystonia. So when I first saw Tremor’s tactile dust jacket with its beautiful, high-resolution photograph of a smashed milk bottle on a cement pathway, I couldn’t help thinking of those tiny, random earthquakes that are rarely felt and create little damage, but that often signal larger, more intense quakes to come. Then I read the book and learnt that dystonia is a neurological disorder that can cause, among other things, involuntary tremors and painful, uncontrollable and disabling spasms anywhere in the body. Dystonia won’t kill you, but there’s no cure for it. When I looked at the cover again, I realised just how clever a visual metaphor it is.
Sonia Voumard has a Doctorate in Creative Arts from UTS, where she taught nonfiction writing for many years. She’s also written several other books, most notably The Media and the Massacre (2016) and had a distinguished career as a political journalist with The Age. And it shows.
Although Tremor is deeply personal, it’s also very outward looking work. Voumard uses her journalist’s fine observation skills to make connections and pepper her story with broader, time relevant, societal events. Her story begins on December 3, 2020, the day of her brain surgery, but moves seamlessly in and out of time. Tremor has many elements of a quest narrative. She recounts the many stages of her search to reach an acceptance of her ‘movement disorder’ by enduring social embarrassments, often feeling professionally vulnerable and overcoming her fears of being judged by others. Miraculously, Voumard’s good humour, dignity and empathy for others never waver, which results in a moving and thought-provoking memoir.
‘Dystonia, my dystonia, is my story to own… It has limited but also extended me… dystonia is preferable to many other things. Like cancer or an unhappy life. Sometimes it feels trivial, an imposter’s concern.’ Put simply, Tremor is quite inspirational.
If you want to find out more about the 20/40 Prize visit: https://finlaylloyd.com/20-40/
About the reviewer: Roslyn McFarland is a fiction writer, poet and essayist. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UTS. Her new novel, Foreign Attachments about the life of Australian artist Stella Bowen has recently been published by Ginninderra Press, which also published her first novel, All the Lives We’ve Lived in 2019. An earlier novella, The Privacy of Art, was published as an e-book. Her poems and short stories have appeared in various print and online platforms. Roslyn has been a writer and researcher for NSW Department of Education and has also written educational materials for Sydney’s Australian Museum and written and edited a series of highly successful HSC English Course Books for Cambridge University Press. Find out more at: https://www.facebook.com/RoslynMcFarland.Writer