Fascinating read about a fascinating woman. Makes me desperate to have a cup of tea and a sit down with Sandra.

High maintenance: forget Dame Edna, this is Melbourne’s housewife superstar now. Sandra Pankhurst, wife, businesswoman, abuse survivor, trans woman. Considering she shifted sex in 1977, in Australia, this is someone who’s seriously got her shit together.

Or not, for as a misery memoir this takes some beating. Pankhurst sounds part-nightmare, part-hero in about equal measure and comes out of this execrably-written book with a measure of dignity despite the chaos wrought around her. Her work - as a trauma cleaner, picking up after those too confused, incapable or dead to run a tidy household - is an anchor, the banality of daily misery a counterweight to the horrors she’s endured. It can get a bit Priscilla in places (“come home to the wo-man in your life”) but there’s a sweetness and determination that offsets this. Even though her voice can probably strip paint off cars at 50 metres, I’d want her on my side rather than the opposition’s.

TWs: rape described in detail, transphobia, homophobia, child abuse and neglect

I was excited to begin reading The Trauma Cleaner – it is a non-fiction detailing the life and work of Sandra Pankhurst, a trans woman who owns a trauma cleaning business. If you expect the writing to focus on her business only, then this probably won’t be your ideal read. The trauma cleaning was probably what intrigued me the most – the striking descriptions of the homes she cleans and the people living in them stood out to me and were probably what I’d remember the most. However, the further I got into the book the more issues I noticed in the way it is told.

My main one is the lack of transparency. This is a non-fiction that claims to give a full picture of a person’s life experience, but in the end fairls to give some information I’d describe as vital

• For instance, the author is never explicit about the nature of her relationship with her subject and how it affects her writing. I’ve seen them described as having a reporter-subject relationship, as wells as a close friendship – this shows how easy to misinterpret what we’re given in the book actually is.
• Another thing I noticed was that the usage of masculine language for Sandra before her transition. It is unclear whether this is done for the audience’s benefit, or because that’s the way Sandra conceptualizes her gender journey – the only information we’re given is that she’s uncomfortable sharing her deadname, which is why the book uses a made up name for her in the past.
• The book also lacked transparency in the way it portrayed Sandra’s past as a whole. The author repeatedly states that her subject is not a reliable narrator due to her memory being affected by trauma, substance abuse, age and health. However, save for a couple of occasions, it doesn’t state clearly which accounts of her life are based on her own words, and which are taken from other sources.

I also had a few other issues with this book.
• A rape is described in vivid detail without any warning. The section is long and very graphic, putting the reader in the prospective of the victim.
• The author repeatedly states that Sandra doesn’t associate with other trans women and queer people in general, because she feels a close kinship to cis women. Based on the context given, I was left with the impression this had little to do with kinship and all to do with her desire to pass as cis and some amount of internalized transphobia. Her friends are also shown to be quite transphobic, treating her as some sort of “good trans”.
• Krasnostein oftentimes romanticizes Panhurst, even when what she’s doing is not all that admirable. Refusing to wear protective equipment in her work is not an act of bravery, and is actually quite self-destructive.

Again, there are some good things in this, but I would rather my non-fiction not be opaque about so much information essential to undertsnading its subject.

I stumbled on the audio book and could not stop listening to it; I knew nothing of Sandra's background when I started reading and loved that her personal history was so deftly interwoven with the stores about and details of trauma cleaning. The book is really special and the audio narration is spectacular. This is easily the best book I've read so far in 2020.

An incredible tale and a totally unique biography. I found it absolutely riveting.

I had heard so many good things about this book, so I thought I would love it.
Yes, it's a page turner, full of flawed and fascinating characters, but the composition and writing style seriously bothered me. My major beefs:

1. The author continually makes up dialogue from past events which she didn't witness and the main protagonist clearly states she can't remember! So to a large part, it's a work of fiction, billed as a biography.

2. Sandra has a fascinating, and sometimes brutal, past, but there's no real digging into what makes her tick. Sandra keeps saying she doesn't remember and it's not important to her, so it's all fairly superficial. The author clearly adores Sandra, but I couldn't see why. She constantly describes her as beautiful (in whose eyes? The author's), and empathetic (evident only to a slim degree and only to people she has the most superficial relationship with, i.e. her paying clients).

3. The author constantly makes judgements about Sandra's actions, and the reactions of those who interact with Sandra throughout her life. The author's judgements, complete with her own expletives, don't belong in a biography. I don't have a problem with expletives in dialogue, but what are they doing in the author's analysis of events?

4. The author constantly inserts herself into the story. In the penultimate chapter she throws in a few asides about how her mother walked out when she was a child and she is still suffering. This is not explained in any detail. What on earth is the author's past trauma doing in someone else's biography? And why so sketchy? The editor should have removed those few lines because they add nothing to Sandra's story. Perhaps Krasnostein could write her own biography next time.

2.5 stars from me because I was intrigued enough in Sandra's story to keep reading, but I rounded down because there were too many problems with the book.