THE TRAUMA CLEANER
by Sarah Krasnostein
(Text, $40)
Reviewed by Helen van Berkel
We humans manage to get ourselves into some terrible messes. Sometimes it is not of our making - sometimes life gets too down and dirty to deal with. And when that happens, Sandra Pankhurst is the person you should hope comes along.
Pankhurst is a forensic cleaner who clears up after murders, suicides, horrors. But she doesn't only clean up after the dead, she also cleans up the living themselves: the first client we meet is a deeply damaged woman who paints her trauma on the walls of her rat-infested house.
Her story is probably one of the most touching, thoughtful and thought-provoking you will ever read. Sarah Krasnostein tells it with moving compassion, even love, and also helps us to understand the unexpectedly immaculate Pankhurst with her acrylic nails and glowing white shoes.
We learn she was born a boy and then, at the hands of her parents, endured shocking abuse and rejection during her miserable childhood. The Trauma Cleaner gives an insight into blighted lives and how people deal - or do not - with the rotten hands they are unfortunate enough to be dealt.
