There are any number of words and expressions in the public sphere that become overused to the point of parody. After that “unprecedented year”, as we inch our way back to “the new normal” still observing “an abundance of caution”, one of my prime candidates is anyone who refers to a book or work of art as “eerily prescient” or “timely”.
Good books are always timely: great writers reflect the world back to us, asking questions of what they encounter and applying their powers of observation and empathy to making sense of the world around us.
But Rick Morton’s new book, My Year of Living Vulnerably, feels both timely and, in its unassuming way, eerily prescient of the current moment.
This is a book about the nature of trauma, about the ways in which it lives in our bodies, shapes our lives and our understanding of and response to the world. It is a book about the nature of human contact, about how we need one another in complex, raw, consuming ways. And, as will come as no surprise to fans of Morton’s electrifying, moving debut, One Hundred Years of Dirt, it is a book steeped in a kind of candour and unabashed openness that is all too rare, inviting generosity, self-scrutiny and vulnerability of its readers.
There is little need to canvass the news of the day to find examples of how such a book – such an approach – is both necessary and important, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome Rick as the guest of this month’s Guardian Australia book club, next Friday 19 March at 1pm.
Morton’s journalism has marked him out as a writer of rare compassion and forensic curiosity, and across his memoirs he’s applied that to questions of his own capacity and incapacity, and his 2019 diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder. The emotional abuse and absence of his father – so vividly recounted in One Hundred Years of Dirt – could not just be understood as a story of the failings of the past; it was a defining reality of Morton’s adult life and one that required him to explore the nature of love and being loved, and the ways in which he needed to reassess his relationship with the world.
For all it has stripped things away, causing loss and devastation and instability, Covid has given us an unprecedented (sorry) opportunity to think about how we live our lives. The books we read offer us insight into different ways of thinking, invite us to ask questions of ourselves and others. Part scientific enquiry, part social research, part memoir, My Year of Living Vulnerably is a book that speaks directly to the choices we might make after a period of physical, social, even cultural distancing from which we’re only just slowly beginning to emerge.
Morton’s “big nerd project”, as he puts it, canvasses questions of forgiveness and loneliness, masculinity and kindness, touch and doubt, and while intensely personal still gives us a jumping off point for what promises to be a wonderful chat next week.
Our March book club is your chance to ask about what lessons were learnt in the writing of this book; about how a quest for love withheld has offered its author a new way to relate to the people around him; about his once again indelible depiction of his mum, Deb. It’s also your chance to offer your own prescriptions for rethinking the Self, the importance of others, and how we are to live.
The acknowledgements section at the back of My Year of Living Vulnerably (as Morton puts it, a glimpse into the “emotional hinterland of the author”) includes the word love or one of its derivations at least once a paragraph. It’s a testament to the vulnerability that he has exposed himself to, and demanded of himself. So join us for a conversation for which nothing less than emotional honesty and unequivocal self-scrutiny will suffice.
• Rick Morton will join Guardian Australia’s book club at 1pm on Friday 19 March, in partnership with Australia at Home. If you have a question for him and would like to join the chat, pre-register by clicking this link
