Review by Brenda Rowlandson, somatic psychotherapist.
May 2025
In Elisabeth Hanscombe’s second book, The Museum of Failure, she quotes a trusted colleague: ’Tell the truth’, he said. ‘Not gossip, but truth. Otherwise, no-one will take you seriously’.
She rivets the reader’s attention in the Prologue as she describes a quiet domestic scene in her family home that belies the horror unfolding in another part of the house. Her mother is sewing a dress for her sixteen-year-old sister’s first school dance. The sewing machine whirrs as Elisabeth, lying in bed in the dark, waits in tense, breathless silence for her father’s dreaded footsteps on the stairs, until his silhouette appears in the bedroom doorway.
He is on his way to her sister’s bed opposite her. Her mother sews in the kitchen downstairs, unaware that upstairs all is far from well, as is gradually revealed in this candid and unswervingly honest book.
Elisabeth tells us a perilous story of brutal, bewildering rejection by her idealised psychoanalytic training institute and her profound sense of shame and self-castigation; her passionate teenage crushes on unattainable Catholic nuns and priests; confusing, unrequited feelings of love and hate for her revered analyst Mrs Milanova, and ultimately, her shock when colleagues turned against her after she had presented an approved paper about incest at a professional development seminar.
All these experiences were set against the traumatising, shadowy background of home-life with a sexually abusive, narcissistic and exhibitionist father who dominated the entire family with his dark need for total power.
She has written a courageous and gutsy book that demands we take it seriously. She writes with intelligence and clarity, in a ‘no holds barred’ way that is affecting, sometimes shocking, but her voice is patently clear, confident and strong throughout.
In the telling of her story, she holds a sure, steady pace. It is a beautifully crafted book, and the editing is first rate, all of which made it absorbing and unforgettable, especially at those times when I reluctantly had to put it down to attend to life matters and work.
She lets us know why she has written her autobiography.
“I write to mitigate my hatred, to turn it into something more loving, to turn it into a less toxic river running through me, to turn my mind from its monstrous underpinnings into something worth saving”.
Elisabeth’s is a mind most definitely worth saving.
I am delighted to both review and highly recommend her book.
— Brenda Rowlandson Somatic psychotherapist, NSW.
