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Jim Neat is an unusual and striking memoir, a coalescing of prose, poetry, found documents and photographs. In it Mary J Oliver uncovers the life of her father (b. 1904) and ranges across the history of England and Canada in the twentieth century. Jim left England in his teens, as a seaman. He travelled to South Africa, stowed away to Australia and eventually landed in Canada just before the Great Depression. Here he met his partner Lizbietta in a bookshop in Toronto, but while he was working as a lumberjack she died in childbirth. Ill and destitute, Jim was declared a vagrant and his baby daughter was sent to an orphanage. Admitted to a mental hospital in Ontario Jim was eventually repatriated to England.
Jim met and married Mary's mother during the war before serving in North Africa and Italy. Their marriage was a difficult one and although it endured until Jim died in 1983, his life was dominated by the loss of Lizbietta and their child. Driven by the prospect of a half-sister, and the enigma of a father she didn't really know, Oliver set out to discover the truth behind the family stories and to better understand Jim.
Researching, gathering documents, following leads, Oliver follows Jim's story full circle to Canada. She presents the case for the extraordinary life lived by an ostensibly ordinary man, his family and the people who knew him witnesses in his defence. The verdict is this remarkable evocation of a fractured life.
I am the amazed reader of Jim Neat. I've read it twice, the second time in one sitting. What an incredible work of love, imagination, respect and repair. I was very touched by Jim's difficult, brave endurance, as he is assailed by every test of harsh reality. Here his poet daughter works the scant yet extraordinary facts, & weaves them into a work that gets to the bones & questions what it is to live. I was touched by the flavour of the particular with which Mary J. Oliver imbues the narrative of Jim Neat, his times, her times, our times. It is an epic and beautiful work, leaving me charmed and haunted. – Sophie Herxheimer
It's been some while since I have read a book from cover to cover without being able to put it down. In Mary J. Oliver's Jim Neat, I found myself absorbed to the point of pausing all incoming communications. I followed Jim's story - a narrative that seamlessly glides through episodic instalments, confessional poetry, case history, letters, unsent postcards, diary entries, pioneer archives and judicial injustices that contribute to both the man, and a life that is quite extraordinary. The text flows with the ease of a novel, while all the while one is reading fact after heart-wrenching fact as the most uncanny events push Jim into circumstances that the majority of us would not recover from. His enduring ability to bounce back is staggering, and lies in his passion, honesty, and a belief that 'true love' must be protected at all costs. Buy this book, read it, and you will not be disappointed. If anything, you will be left wanting to know more. – Roz Hopkinson