The Erratics by Laveau-Harvie

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Laveau-Harvie’s memoir ‘The Erratics’ offers insight into the inner-workings of the Laveau-Harvie family, and the life of a mother who is as ‘Mad as a Meat Axe’. The down-underism written on the paperwork that sits at the end of a crazy mother’s hospital bed is a warning to hospital staff that who this gaunt 94-year-old woman purports to be, and who she is, are two very different things. Enlisting the validating solidarity of a sister who is a witness to the events of the past, the sister’s story gives weight to the authority of the author’s voice, as the two women begin their campaign to have ‘our mother’ institutionalised in order to prevent her from killing ‘our father’. Unbelieving, a suite of educated medicos evaluate the claims made by ‘gold digger’ daughters, against stories peddled by the nonagenarian. The narrative itself, seemingly embellished and hyperbolic, evinces the idea that real lived experience can be more extraordinary than fiction. Coupled with pathos, the levity that emerges as Laveau-Harvie works to make sense of the ridiculous gives the memoir a vitality that legitimises the bizarre story of a daughter subjected to the antics of a mother who is in the author’s own words, certifiably mad.