Heimlich Unheimlich

"Heimlich Unheimlich is a beautiful book that invites the reader to engage with the text in circular ways, coming back to each page to experience it differently each time. It's a memoir and a story but it's also an experience that invites the reader to participate in the making of a self and the ways in which we are interconnected."

 - Magdalena Ball writing in Compulsive Reader

"Weaving turns environmental matter into usable material, and it's a strong image in Heimlich Unheimlich. There's a hint of bildungsroman to the weaving process: socialising raw living matter into workable yarn, then weaving yarn into usable cloth. Woven story is very much the mode of Heimlich Unheimlich. Hessian and Muslin are readily identifiable threads, and there are others: the girls' families, cultures left behind, and the Anglophone cultures the children grow into. World War II is backing material, always present as a shaping and locating influence. War as raw material for some, harvest for others: lives cut at the root and people displaced. Some effort of the hands is needed to restore them to flower. As an effort of the hands, there's something very life-affirming in Heimlich Unheimlich. Smith and Karl-Spence are women born on opposite sides of one of history's worst conflicts, terrible in scale and cruelty. They find common human experiences-displacement, longing-and make something beautiful out of it all."

 - Chris Arnold, Zero Day, PhD thesis, University of Western Australia, 2022