Before When I Am Sixty-Four, Debra Adelaide had published four novels, two collections of short stories, and two works of non-fiction. She teaches creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney and has also edited seven books.
She describes her latest book as autofiction, that is, a work that combines autobiography and fiction. At a writing festival talk I attended, Adelaide estimated it was 80% fact and 20% fiction.
Its focus is her friendship with Gabrielle Carey from the age of twelve until Carey’s suicide in 2023 at the age of 64, the same age as that at which Carey’s father committed suicide – significantly (hence the title) and yes, the Beatles song is relevant.
Carey is best known for her co-authoring with Kathy Lette in their teens of Puberty Blues, an excoriating and controversial account of the sexism and misogyny of Cronulla beach teen culture, made into an equally controversial film two years later in 1981.
Carey was also a teacher of creative writing at UTS and published one other novel, four autobiographical works, and four other non-fiction books.
These are important details to understand because this is as much about writing as it is about friendship, about craft as it is about connection, about articulation as it is about repression, and about family as it is about mental health.
When I Am Sixty-Four is Adelaide’s expression of what her friendship with Carey meant and how it couldn’t help her save her friend from lethal depression. That doesn’t make it by any means a depressing book – in fact, there is much delight and much to delight in.
Adelaide never refers to Carey by name, only as “my friend”, until the Acknowledgements at the end. This gives the book a particular character focused on the friendship between two girls, young women, and older women – whoever they may be.
She also refers to Lette as her friend’s “other friend”, with whom she didn’t get along. It’s an odd feeling to know exactly who is being talked about even though they’re not named. In Adelaide’s hands this doesn’t create a distancing effect – in fact, it creates a greater intimacy.
And When I Am Sixty-Four is very intimate, very detailed about two women who were close (apart from the period where the “other friend” was more significant in her friend’s life) but who were not alike, not on the same wavelength, perhaps even opposite in character, but close nevertheless.
I haven’t read any of Adelaide’s other books (although I now want to) and I wonder if she uses some of the same techniques in them: dialogue that is never put in quotation marks (which isn’t in the slightest confusing or distracting), descriptions of birdlife that take on as much a sense of metaphor as physical scene-setting, and family – both parental and filial – that exerts a strong pull over both women.
Carey’s mental health issues are portrayed sensitively but with great candour. This book could serve as a guidebook for how devastating depression can be and how helpless even a close friend can be in the face of it.
Adelaide also discourses articulately on what writing is and how it works for two very different and very talented writers – and very Australian writers, at that. It could just as easily serve as a guidebook for fiction versus non-fiction.
Complex, direct, wry, contemplative, non-judgemental, anecdotal, observational, conversational, reflective: When I Am Sixty-Four is a truly beautiful book.
Highly recommended.