Life And Death In The Raw

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday October 22, 2005

Reviewed by Lauren Martin, a Herald journalist.

Layla's Story: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Loss and Longing

By Vanessa Gorman

Viking, 314pp, $29.95

Vanessa Gorman opens her book with an apology, labelled a prologue. In it, she concedes the title could have been Lucky Middle Class Woman Writes Self-indulgent Narcissistic Sob Story. "Ah! It feels better to have that out in the open. I can relax now."

And relax she does. Part One opens with a close-up photo of her in a kiss and by page 23 she has "hoisted [her] skirt, climbed onto his lap and began to devour him - face, neck, hair - my groin pressing into his hard cock straining through his jeans."

Three pages later, the jeans are off. There is moaning, groaning and dialogue accompanying ever more detail. In a helpful diary excerpt from September '94, inserted at page 35, Gorman ponders sex talk: "The high-minded part of myself enjoys a bit of literary, understated erotica, but what works in bed is the language of the lewd - the short, sharp, shock words of porn, including..."

Perhaps it's because she's a long-time documentary-maker and producer for Australian Story that Gorman actually debates this sort of stuff in her diary. Or maybe it's why she feels sure that putting it out there, personal letters and everything, will transcend the details. After all, she's already had a huge response to two revealing personal documentaries on this period of her life. Private life, public therapy.

Her story - successful thirtysomething woman absolutely wants to have a baby and falls passionately in love with a man who absolutely doesn't - certainly resonates with social (and publishing) trends.

Gorman meets her man at a meditation weekend (very '90s). Over time they enjoy gen X recreational drugs and lots of sex. Part of their much-discussed "journey" together is a sea change from Sydney to Byron. It's looking very angsty modern Everywoman - cliches dressed up with Penthouse letters. (In a single page she quotes the Sufi poet Rumi, the American psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden and bestselling life guru M. Scott Peck.)

Then Gorman gets treacherous - and more interesting. She confesses to betraying her lover because of her biological deadline. She describes with force the panic of missing out and the joy of being pregnant. Likewise her labour story.

The power of detail and so much honesty is truly affecting; Gorman's baby, Layla, dies within hours of her birth. Her account of the following months makes for tear-stained pages. There are practical questions well considered - can Layla's body leave the hospital, and if so what sort of ceremony and appreciation of this tiny life will help her parents cope?

"Grief is another country," says the journal excerpt from March 2000. Gorman is a penetrating guide. The trip is all the more devastating because by now readers know Gorman's deepest feelings more than our own best friends'. She wanted it badly, she's suffering badly, and maybe knowing it will make us more sensitive.

She wants it to make us more aware of the precious meaning in our sometimes maddening children, those who lived, whose birth went the way it was supposed to go. Who got rattles and rashes and became regular kids.

Gorman's story goes on, to another man, to another, better crack at motherhood. It renders more poignant that apologetic prologue, where she concludes: "Having children, like life itself, is all about the letting go."

© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

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