The debut book from Katoomba-based author Carol Major is an emotional, confronting and witty journey through family, illness, grief and recovery.
The Asparagus Wars is a memoir that covers, according to the author, "the battle to save my daughter from an aggressive form of muscular dystrophy, complicated by cancer." Published by the independent Australian publishing house, Spineless Wonders, The Asparagus Wars will be officially released on October 1.
The book is an account of coming to terms with personal grief, whilst locating this in a context informed by world history and travel. The book has a particular focus on France. Not only does Major write about her longing to take her daughter, a writer and artist herself, to Paris as she battled her illness, she actually wrote her memoir holed up in a region of France with a violent history.
"I wrote much of the manuscript in a stone cottage in the Marne, the site of some of the worst battles of World War I," she told the Gazette. "I was on a crazy expedition looking for the graves of disgraced soldiers shot at dawn, trying to make sense of myself. Why didn't I try harder to find a cure? Why are life challenges often framed in the binary oppositions of war: winners, losers, heroes, the craven, and those who like me put down their rifles and turn to magical thinking? During those weeks I wrote letters to my daughter in much the same way soldiers wrote from that awful Front over 100 years ago."
Major draws links between the trauma and violence of wars between nations and the personal suffering wrought by chronic and terminal illness: the long-lasting effects, the impact on relationships, and the comparable nature of the respective 'battlefields'. She cites as influences the likes of Helen McDonald and John Banville.
The Asparagus Wars was shortlisted for the 2020 International Beverly Prize for Literature, and has received glowing reviews from The Canberra Times and The Sydney Morning Herald, which described the book as "luminous, sometimes humorous and often harrowing". Finding humour amid tragedy was important for Major.
"I wanted to write a book that stepped away from binary judgements of right and wrong, good guys and bad, a book that was comic as well as heart-wrenching, given comedy provides a different perspective on what we consider serious," she said.
Major was born in Scotland and grew up in Canada, before settling in the Blue Mountains in 2008. Since then, she has worked as a consultant at Varuna, The Writers House in Katoomba, providing mentorship and guidance to numerous authors who have gone on to publishing success. Perhaps surprisingly, her own writing has not always been her priority.
"I didn't begin this project with the expectation it would be published, and I haven't really backed myself in terms of getting my manuscripts into the world," she said. "But this time I was overwhelmed with the need to speak out loud, for this story to be heard."
As for the title, The Asparagus Wars refers to a treatment Major was recommended for her daughter involving blended asparagus. Major's next project is to return to a previously abandoned novel.
