I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t planned to read Sarah Krasnostein’s biography The trauma cleaner. I feared it might be one of those sensationalised, voyeuristic stories, but how wrong I was. I thank Brother Gums and partner for this great birthday gift.
I was wrong because … no, let me start with why I thought what I thought. The subject of this biography, Sandra Pankhurst, is a transgender woman, now in her early-sixties. She’s been a drag queen and a sex worker, and now has a trauma cleaning business, which means she cleans houses after murders and other difficult, messy deaths. It also means that she cleans the houses of hoarders, particularly those whose hoarding has resulted in squalid living conditions. And there’s more. Pankhurst was also an abused, neglected and rejected adopted child, and she experienced the violent death of her pregnant girlfriend. You can see why I feared what I did.
But, I couldn’t have been more wrong, for two main reasons – Sarah Pankhurst is a compelling human being, and Sarah Krasnostein a wonderful writer who knows her subject well. I’m not surprised that the book is doing well on the award circuit this year, including winning the 2018 Victorian Prize for Literature.
First Pankhurst
Born apparently a boy, and adopted when 6-weeks-old by a couple to replace their son who’d died during childbirth, Pankhurst’s life was fraught from the start. He was adopted because his parents had been told they couldn’t have more biological children, but his life was upended five years later when the inevitable happened. A son was born, followed by another two years later. His parents told him they’d made a mistake, because now they had two sons, and proceeded to increasingly exclude him from the family circle. He was physically and emotionally abused and neglected. Unbelievable – except that we all know, don’t we, that human beings are capable of unbelievable cruelty.
Eventually, Pankhurst left home, married, and had children, but his gender dysphoria began to affect his ability to live the life he’d forged. He left his family, and over the next couple of decades was a drag queen and sex worker, and underwent sex reassignment surgery in its early days in Australia, to become the person now known as Sandra. She lost a pregnant partner through a vicious assault by a club bouncer, and worked in the brothels of Kalgoorlie. All this at a time when gay and transgender people were ostracised and brutalised, particularly by those in authority. Then she married an older man, George. She ran a small hardware business with him, and became a respected leader in her community. It was after this business failed that Pankhurst moved into cleaning and thence to her current speciality of trauma cleaning.
Now, popular wisdom would say that a person so neglected and abused would end up abusing others, or, at the very least, be bitter, but not so Pankhurst, which makes her an amazing being, or, as Krasnostein says, “utterly peerless”. Here is just one example of her tender but firm care of a hoarder – Janice, whom she and her team struggle to keep from going through the bags of “rubbish” being thrown out.
And then, speaking to herself [Janice this is], sharp and low, ‘Why do you do this? You know what rubbish is.’
‘Because you see yourself as rubbish,’ Sandra says. ‘Time to start seeing the good in life. You deserve it.’ The angel statue suddenly slips off the couch and bounces on the carpet; a wing snaps off.
‘Is that a bad omen?’ Janice asks, looking up at Sandra frantically.
‘You know what it’s saying?’ Sandra answers with a smile. ‘I’m broken but I’m not dead.’
And this is what she does, time and time again, building up her damaged clients, gently guiding them to make better decisions, and, above all, treating them with absolute dignity, all the while surrounded by a squalor most of us would run a mile from.
And now Krasnostein
But what makes this book so captivating is Krasnostein’s skills in telling it to reveal Pankhurst’s extraordinariness. I’ll start with the mundane, the book’s structure. It begins with an untitled preface in which Krasnostein introduces Pankhurst, and then moves into the first and unnumbered chapter titled Kim, who turns out to be one of Krasnostein’s clients. From here we move to the numbered chapter 2 which begins the chronicle of Pankhurst’s biography with her childhood. The book then progresses in alternating named and numbered chapters – switching that is, between clients and biography – until the last two chapters which are both numbered. This structure does a number of things, one of which is to show, as we go, how Pankhurst’s own experiences have made her the empathetic, but no-nonsense, trauma cleaner (no, person) she is.
This brings me to the book’s genre – a biography of a living person. To write it, Krasnostein had to traverse several mine-fields, the first being the presence of the subject. It’s clear that Krasnostein is close to her subject, which could make us question her objectivity. Fortunately, I’m not a huge believer in objectivity, but I do believe in being thoughtfully analytical, and this is what Krasnostein achieves. She doesn’t hide her admiration of Pankhurst. Indeed she addresses Pankhurst in her “preface” calling the book “my love letter to you”.
Related to this minefield is the fact-gathering one. There are gaps in Pankhurst’s memory. She is not, Krasnostein says, “a flawlessly reliable narrator”:
She is in her early sixties and simply not old enough for that to be the reason why she is so bad with the basic sequence of her life, particularly her early life. Many facts of Sandra’s past are either entirely forgotten, endlessly interchangeable, neurotically ordered, conflicting or loosely tethered to reality.
Krasnostein suggests various reasons for this lack of reliability, including drugs, trauma, and the fact that she has not spent her life surrounded by people who have always known her and with whom she’s shared life’s stories again and again, building up a personal history. Makes sense – and suggests another fallout from the ostracism and neglect experienced by people like Pankhurst.
One of these Pankhurst-memory-gaps relates to her first marriage. Whenever Krasnostein questions her about this time in her life, about the way she left her wife and children, pretty much high-and-dry and with no ongoing interest or involvement, Pankhurst, who exhibits such empathy in so much of her life, seems unable to answer. Krasnostein writes – and this is also a good example of her gorgeous style and of her attempt to get at “the truth”:
When I ask these questions, Sandra genuinely seems to be considering them for the first time and uninterested in pursing them further. We have floated across the line and here we stay, becalmed, past her outer limits. The mediaeval horizon where you simply sailed off the edge of the earth or were swallowed by the monstrous beasts that swam there.
With a biography of a non-famous living person, there are few documentary sources against which the biographer can validate what the subject says, but there are other people. And Krasnostein speaks to them, including this first wife, Linda, who was treated so poorly but who seems to bear no animosity. She’s amazing too. That’s the thing about this book: there’s such a display of basic human compassion amongst people, many of whom have so little.
And finally, if you haven’t already noticed, there’s the language. It frequently took my breath away with its clarity and freshness. Here’s a description of Sandra after she’d experienced a brutal rape while working in a Kalgoorlie brothel:
It’s not the first time she’s had crippling pain that she pushes into a tight little marble and drops down through the grates of her mind, somewhere deep below.
It may be that I loved this book so much because I had no real expectations, but I think it’s more than that. The trauma cleaner is an elegantly conceived and warmly written book about a woman who could teach us all something, I’m sure, about tolerance, acceptance, and respect. With a red-face, I recommend it.
Sarah Krasnostein
The trauma cleaner: One woman’s extraordinary life in death, decay & disaster
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2017
261pp.
ISBN: 9781925498523
Whispering Gums 
WG: Again – your compassion for our fellows shines through in this review of Sarah Krasnostein’s book. She was at the Adelaide Writer’s festival on one stage when I had chosen the other stage to attend. Maybe I had some kind of reluctance to listen to her story – she was one of two or maybe three people at her session. I recall having seen a documentary some years ago about exactly this kind of work – maybe that had added to my reluctance – pushed me to finding the other stage session more interesting. But you have made me buy the book – yet again! Between you and Jonathan – the two most consistently fine and trustworthy reviewers I know. Thank-you. Jim
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Haha Jim, thanks … sounds like you had the same reticence as I did about reading this book … I hope that you aren’t sorry that you decided to take my recommendation. I don’t think you will be because it has both a great character and great writing. That combination is hard to beat I think.
Now nearly finished – beyond moved – both by the central figure – and by Sarah’s beautiful love letter to her. Thank-you for the review!
Oh I’m so glad I didn’t lead you astray Jim. It’s hard not to be moved by the person and the writing isn’t it. (Thanks for returning to let me know.)
I’m glad you iiked it!
Me too, n@ncy, thanks.
This sounds fascinating. Pankhurst has packed a lot into life. I think just the story of running a trauma clean up business would be interesting.
I think that while folks who had abusive parents are more likely to be abusive themselves, the majority of such folks do not go on to do that.
Thanks Brian… No, you’re right of course but it’s a popular assumption I think because they’re the one’s we hear, aren’t they?
As always a great review, Sue, of a fine book. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
And I’m glad you gave it to me. It was a wonderful read.
Hi Sue, a great review. I am so pleased you were able to read this harrowing story. I saw Sarah Kranostein at our local library. She was excellent in supplying all the work behind the biography of Sandra. She was honest at the difficulties she encountered with her acceptance of Sandra’s decisions, but also admired her greatly..
Thanks Meg, that’s the sense I got re her attitude. I guess she realised that it’s easy to question decisions from our own perspective but if we’d walked in Pankhurst’s shoes who knows what decisions we’d make.
I’d heard of this book but like you, resisted reading it. But now after your review, I’ll definitely put it on my to read list!
Great Anna, do let me know if you do read it what you think.
I loved everything about this book. Once again the publisher sells this book based on the cleaning of houses after grizzly murders or lonely deaths. Sensationalises the blurb but it is barely about that topic. It is such a wonderful story about such a compassionate person. I get so tired of sales based on cheap sensationalism. It happens so often with commercialness (is that a word?) of modern books. My tiny rant🐧🐧🐧
I am getting sick of replying to comments via the WordPress app. It tells me my reply has been sent but the reply doesn’t appear hear!
I replied to this, essentially agreeing with you. It’s a wonderful portrait of a compassionate person.
An excellent review, of a book I still don’t want to read. For me, it wouldn’t matter how well it was written, this kind of memoir is just not my thing.
But I chose to hear Krasnostein speak at Melbourne Jewish Book Week in a session called Writing Other People’s Lives, and she spoke about the writing issues as you have: writing a life of a living person, and in particular one who has significant memory gaps. She said that she clearly signals where these gaps are, but does she also analyse her own potential bias towards presenting a positive view of the subject, do you think? This was what I was interested in, because of my experience reading a bio of the then living Margaret Olley where the biographer was clearly IMO constrained by her affection for her subject and her subject’s refusal to go into ‘no-go’ areas.
Thanks Lisa. I think the difference for me is that thIs is not a memoir so it is one step removed.
Oops I’ll finish this later… Am out and on my phone… My finger slipped and sent that unfinished reply! Your question is good and I want to answer it properly!
This is a good question, Lisa: “does she also analyse her own potential bias towards presenting a positive view of the subject, do you think?” My answer is that it depends on HOW you read the book, HOW you read the tone and between the lines. She doesn’t, I’d say based on one reading, directly address it, but, as in the comment above regarding Pankhurst’s attitude to her wife, Linda, and two sons, she reveals her own uncertainty, her own questioning, about Pankhurst’s appearing to be so uninterested and uncaring about these people and yet so compassionate towards others. This happens a few times throughout the book. Krasnostein also shows that Pankhurst is compassionate to her clients but not sentimental.
The end result is a book that is clearly positive about Sandra but doesn’t leave you thinking she is a saint. It leaves you thinking that she is a real human being whom, despite her flaws, you have to admire for her guts, her resilience, and her warm but sensible compassion.
Fair enough, I guess…
It’s a question I also have about The Tattooist of Auschwitz too, because Heather Morris the author (who also spoke at the MJBW) had a very close relationship with him as well.
“Fair enough, I guess…” I love it Lisa. Foot in both camps!
Well, I do have reservations. But when I haven’t read the book, and don’t plan to, it seems prudent and polite to keep them to myself!
And very wise that is too, I’d say!
Excellent review, Sue. This book is so beautifully written, so compassionate, so disturbing. I was struck by Sandra Pankhurst’s blunt dignity, her own compassion and the pride she takes in her desolate work, and by Sara Krasnostein’s eloquent, poetic portrayal. A singular biography, and deserving of all those accolades.
Couldn’t have said it better myself Amanda. It’s really rather astonishing.
“Poetic” is a good word for the writing, though I fear saying that because it can put people off.
Astonishing is just the right description, I think. I thought this book was a marvel. Fascinating subject, perfectly structured, exquisite prose.
Yes, all of that Michelle I agree.
I’ve just posted my review of this book today and can now read yours Sue. I had bought this book last year intrigued by the topics- both of Sandra and the trauma cleaning. I picked it up recently because I saw Sarah Krasnostein at SWF. I think we had quite similar thoughts. I really enjoyed it particularly because of the writing, but also the subject. I thought she did well to fill in the gaps but also wondered about her obvious closeness to her subject. But the only time that I differed significantly with her view was when Peter was a young married man and what he did to his wife and children. I understand why that happened, but was much more concerned with Linda’s situation than Peter’s.
Yes, thanks Louise. And that’s the main point that trips up Sarah too isn’t it? Particularly, as I think I said in my review, given Sandra’s empathy elsewhere. It must surely be tied up with her extreme sense of dislocation at the time that she was just in survival mode. It makes her human… She’s not a saint. Anyhow I’ll read yours later when I sit down at my computer proper.
Becalmed. What a suitable word in the quote to illustrate your comment about her use of language in general. I love it when reading expectations are exceeded so dramatically: it makes up for the other times when we let our expectations run in the other direction and we find ourselves a little disappointed!
Yes, great point Buried, re expectations. I think this is selling overseas so well worth a look if you get the chance.
I missed this when you first posted the review. My gosh what a powerful story. How can one person endure so much and still come through it?
Exactly Karen — hers is an astonishing story and the biographer has done a fantastic job of writing it. As I said I was reticent about reading it but it was excellent.
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