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"To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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LATEST NEWS |
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Wobbles Reviewed
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Review by Narelle Scotford for "NEWSBITE: The Enewsletter for the NSW Writers' Centre"
April 2011
This is the story of a young girl who was one of the fastest and most versatile swimmers of her generation in the world, part of the elite sport scene in Australia in the 1990s, who by the time she was 20 had experienced more physical and mental suffering than most of us ever have.
It was written during her painful journey of finding a new life after the cruel, triumphant, gloriously crazy Olympic dream; frighteningly real, insightful and compassionate, revealing what it was like inside the Olympic swimming family. Nadine will make you angry and sad, affect you so deeply you will start to question things about your own life, your obsessions and the culture that carries them.
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A beautifully written story, showing all the skills Nadine learnt in her University English teaching degree. If you have ever marvelled at the Olympic swimming, or swum yourself and felt the water element embracing you, had an extraordinary dream in your ordinary life, overcome suffering with not too much grace, felt like curling up and
dying when it all gets too much, you will find much in this book to illuminate your way.
It should be compulsory reading for young would-be athletes and their families but it is much more than that it speaks to all of us and we should thank Nadine for her courage in telling it so well and using her natural writing talent to such great effect.
Narelle Scotford is a former psychologist, now a writer of short stories, articles and book reviews, a singer and composer of songs. Vist her blog http://athenapallas.wordpress.com.
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Review by Rebecca Eckland for "MARY: A Journal of New Writing"
Winter 2010
Everyone likes a story about the extraordinary; yet we love nothing more than a story about overcoming obstacles. In Nadine Neumann's memoir, Wobbles, readers experience the author's pursuit of the extraordinary, a chance at Olympic glory in both the 1996 and 2000 games despite the many obstacles that hinder her along the way. Diagnosed with weak lungs in early childhood and prescribed to swim to strengthen them, Neumann decides to pursue a life as an elite swimmer. Though she eventually achieves Olympic greatness, it's not the medals or even the swimming that forms—and informs—the life of the narrator; instead, it is her voice, raw and honest, that reveals in her struggle a human a truth, unique yet universal.
It is the space between those two tensions—uniqueness and universality—that allows Neumann's memoir to move from the days of her youth into a hard-earned, wizened maturity. The space also allows her body and mind to merge in a narrative that is both highly physical and emotionally charged. Passages that recount her swimming, such as "My body has been trained to an ancient rhythm, but I have to give the conductor space. I know what happens when my mind muddles the flow, when I try too hard, and today of all days I cannot allow it to come between me and that song I know is mine" reveal these two strands: the cerebral and physical, intertwined yet distanced; at once united and at war...
While using classic elements of the sport narrative, (the linear time progression of events leading from childhood to adulthood, beautiful descriptions of her "element," the desire to become "untouchable"
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to others when she surpassed them in athletic
competition, the awkwardness of drug testing, the sweet success of victory and the bitterness of disappointment) Neumann sets her narrative apart through a dualistic presentation of selfhood (the swimmer versus the person) which does not unite
until the book's final pages when Neumann can finally ask her family—and herself—what the ultimate meaning of her Olympic journey was. In these honest and raw pages (written by Neumann's family in the form of letters to the author), it is not the pursuit of athletic glory and all its dualistic trappings which surface, but instead a strong, devoted love: love of parents for their daughter who had an extraordinary dream, love of a daughter who used swimming to express the love she had for her family, love for Nadine Neumann, the person. And in that feeling, the Olympic glow envelopes not only her, but all those who shared the journey with her...
But it is Neumann's descriptions of water that merge with her internal emotional landscape that linger; especially in passages wherein she muses on "the unspoken language between a swimmer and the water. We know its signals and it knows our will. It carries us, accepting our force on its body, to where we want to go, and we love it completely." So too does her prose; it carries us from event to event, illness to injury, to the final moment when she must wave goodbye to what was not only a sport, but "a phase in life . . . a long, arduous, all-consuming, identity-defining phase" which requires her to find a new identity; one that is no longer an athlete, but instead a woman.
This is an extract of the review, "Wobbling From Extremes". To read the complete text, click here.
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A Gift That Gives Twice
You want to get them something different, something that isn't 'useful' or 'token', something that won't cost a month's pay. Get a gift that will surprise, perhapse even inspire while also helping support a good cause.
Order your copy of Wobbles by following the Contact link on this website and $10 per copy will go to your choice of the following causes:
ME/CFS Support Association
Reach Out/Inspire Foundation
The Develpoing Foundation - Team Ashton
All you have to do is name your chosen charity in the subject line of your message. So, order your gift that gives twice today and read a sample here.
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To find out more, click here
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To download a brochure, click here
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COMING UP... |
WOBBLES for schools - a teaching resource pack for Stages 4 & 5 (Years 9-12)
TODDLER TRANSITIONS - a series of individualised story books to help your toddler prepare for big changes
FINDING THE WORDS - a collection of short stories from new mothers for new mothers |
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