PBS Selector Anthony Anaxagorou, reveals why he selected The Room Between Us by Denise Saul as a Summer Recommendation. Join now to read his full write-up in our members magazine, the PBS Bulletin:
"When Denise Saul’s mother was diagnosed with aphasia, a condition which affects speech and communication, her role from daughter to carer inspired much of her debut collection The Room Between Us. The book explores the ways families go on interacting with each other when language fails, collapses or is rendered insufficient. The opening title-poem probes into both privacy and agency, through the function of rooms in a house:
I give up trying to lift you from the floor
as the room is no longer between us.
We see boundaries blur with little to cordon off sections. The mind, with its responsibility to care for a mother, becomes the only way to demarcate space, and so it’s here where language is needed to connect/disconnect those varying aspects."
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