Spare Scenes

When Gillian Herbert dug through a file of old family papers she launched a journey of exploration. Flipping through faded photos she recalled in raw black and white detail the moments that shaped her relationship with her parents. Skilfully crafted scenes from her youth reveal how illness, disability, and war combined with parental hopes, fears, and delusions to define her family. Herbert re-enters her experience as a child and young adult to present the stories from a youthful perspective, while steadily chipping away at the hard rock of her beliefs to reveal what her younger self could not see—the cost of keeping her father’s secrets. British understatement adds power to unsettling discoveries that sweep both writer and reader from Canada to England to Egypt and back to England. So pour a cup of tea, as the Herbert family so often did, and consider the depth in Spare Scenes.