At first glance, After Story is a simple narrative: Indigenous lawyer Jasmine takes her mother, Della, on a literary tour of England, hoping that the time spent together will bring them closer to each other. Chapters alternate from each woman’s perspective.
Jasmine has gone to university, the first member of her family to do so, and is on comfortable and familiar ground walking the halls of Oxford or Cambridge, and discussing Dickens and Woolf with others in their tour group.
However, Della brings a refreshing perspective to these literary lions of the English canon and their written words. In her eyes, they are no more important than her Aunty Elaine and her oral wisdom, passed on from generation to generation. ‘Aunty Elaine had said that Aboriginal people had been in Australia for over sixty-five thousand years. So, when you think of it, even things from Shakespeare’s day are all kind of new…’
As the tour continues, familial traumas are revealed. Each site visited awakens memories and creates an opportunity for each woman to consider their past. After visiting the Foundling Hospital in London, Della could see the similarity between the treatment of poor women who tried to reclaim their children but were ‘denied by the governors who felt that they could do a better job of raising children’ and the way Aboriginal children were taken from their families because people thought they could do a better job of bringing them up than their own parents.
After Story gives you a lot to consider. It can be a bit didactic, but that is easy to overlook as Behrendt skilfully weaves together Indigenous history, English literature and a fraught mother/daughter relationship. Managing to balance these themes at the same time as creating a very readable novel is no mean feat!
I wish I could have met the often quoted Aunty Elaine - she sounds like a wise (and funny) lady. She used to tell Jasmine, when she thought she should show more self-belief: ‘Hold yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ - Brilliant!
How Della deals with her grief, and how Jasmine learns to understand her mother, are the beating heart of this moving story.
For lovers of English literature, there is a ‘Tour Reading List’ and a list of the destinations visited: both catnip for bibliophiles!