Out of the woods by Gretchen Shirm

It is 2000 and Jess is working as a judge’s personal secretary at the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. The biggest trial since Nuremberg, they are there to bear witness to the murder of 8000 Muslim men and boys by the Bosnian Serb army in 1995. General Lieutenant Radislav K. is on trial. For Jess, it is a temporary position but a step up from the night-time typing pool in Sydney where she had been working since her divorce. After working with her barrister husband, managing his practice she now finds herself overqualified and overlooked at 50. Proud of her independence, having left her Lismore cane farming home at 15, Jess is ever thankful to the finishing school where she learned shorthand and how to behave in social situations from her mentor Eleanor. She is focused and capable, regarding “output a measure of self-worth’, and the love of her life is her son Daniel. Conscientiously she listens to the witness accounts, actual examples of which are interleaved in the text, and while the harrowing stories of families torn apart make her own traumas seem trivial, she finds herself drawn sympathetically to the accused who looks to her like a good person. Jess settles into the routine of the tribunal in its orderly, clinical room, making notes for her judge as witnesses relate their experiences through translators. She meets Gus, the security guard who tells dad jokes and doesn’t ask too much of her and together they see some of the sights of the Netherlands. She meets up with Merjem, one of the women with links to Srebrenica who has come to watch the trial, and she learns more about the personal side of the genocide. Jess tries to measure her own life, her unstable mother who was unable to show love; the way she created an efficient life for herself until the birth of her son and her feelings of loss of control but unconditional love for him; against the backdrop of people who could take young boys from the arms of their mothers and march them off to their deaths. When she is called back to Australia Jess seems able to develop a different perspective on life. Like Helen Garner’s This House of Grief we are taken into a courtroom for a privileged view of proceedings and hear the testimony of witnesses, but this is more personal and reflective. The third part seemed disconnected to the main story and the ending a little rushed and trite but there is much to recommend in the main character’s reflection and introspection as she learns to inhabit herself against a backdrop of such intense suffering. The Note on the Sources at the end would be useful for anyone wanting to know more.

Themes: War crimes, The Hague, Bearing witness, Personal reflection.

Sue Speck