‘I notice, and not for the first time, that Mother glows when she talks of the war years, whereas her face fades and strains when we get to the present. Back then, the stage was large and irrational forces dictated events. Now the wars are subtle and small and there is never a clear victory. Fighting your loved ones over well-worn territory. Fighting, in a way, over the outcome of those big years.’

Heddy and Me spans the twentieth century and some of its great upheavals: war, the holocaust, immigration

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In telling her mother’s story, Susan Varga also tells her own. As a tiny baby she barely survived the holocaust, in hiding in a Hungarian village with her sister and mother, Heddy. Neither pain nor the devastation of this time lessened Heddy’s will to go on and to recreate her life in Australia.

Reviews

‘This is a challenging, complex, rich, and above all, humane book. Into the process of creating it has gone great frankness and courage, and hard-eon recognition of the potential for destructiveness in the closest, most loving relationships.’

Sarah Dowse, Canberra Times

‘Heddy and Me is a seamless narrative. Varga’s story of her mother and grandmother’s life in Hungary before and during the Nazi era is written with a classic simplicity and effortless flow that belie the difficulties of shifting between generations, between past and present, crossing between one group of relatives to another, juxtaposing personal experience with historical record and maintaining the impression of a continuous dialogue between mother and daughter …’

Mary Rose Liverani, The Australian

‘A book of rare urgency and moral seriousness. It is an engrossing meditation upon troubled relationships, troubled memories and profoundly troubled times. The author dissects life in Budapest and Sydney with rare skill, making both cities live in a new way. Heddy and Me is a disturbing, powerfully moving and wonderfully accomplished work. It steps straight into the front rank of autobiographical writing in this country.’

Judges’ report, FAW Christina Stead Award 1994.

‘The book is a quietly dramatic tightrope walk which goes back and forth between different cultures and generations.

Varga says of her mother: “Heddy’s face is bleak and pinched once the tape is turned off. I can tell it’s not just about the hard teenage years but something about the present. I dread what she’s going to say – that pinched look is always a bad sign. God, I think, she’s still brooding over my latest shock to her system. A few months back I announced that after years of rocky heterosexuality my new love and finally, I hope, my true partner, is a woman. But she says no, it’s not that: ‘I can better understand you being with Anne than why you spent nine long years with Jim.’ She surprises me sometimes, really surprises me.”

Her tale makes us think hard about history [and] culture, which is why it is such a good book.’

Andrew Field, The Courier Mail

Heddy and Me is available in most good book shops

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Available in braille

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