Days Like Strange Symptoms
Tragedy and levity in a magical-realist story about a mother raising a child with multiple disabilities
In this unique novel, we see Sisyphus like we’ve never seen him – or rather, her – before. Baerwaldt’s Sisyphus is not the man forced to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity that keeps rolling back, but a modern mother aimlessly wandering around an inhospitable universe, pushing an empty wheelchair.
Sisyphus’ memory is riddled with gaps. In flashes, she remembers the birth of her daughter Mia, the euphoria, the first few weeks. Slowly, the other stuff starts coming back, too – the endless doctor’s appointments and conflicting diagnoses. She reconstructs how Mia slowly transformed into a case study for the medical world. Sisyphus herself also initially finds herself taking an almost clinical approach, but gradually develops a deep emotional bond with her daughter: ‘A lot of the time, you defy comprehension, but every now and then I’ll find you in certain sounds, a small gesture you make just for me, something we practiced together until we seemed to understand one another. Meaning emerges through repetition.’
The novel is fragmented in style, with brief, numbered chapters which are sometimes reminiscent of poetry or journal entries. In the second part, we witness Sisyphus wandering endlessly through a largely deserted city in search of her daughter, whom she’s supposed to pick up from daycare. In this nightmare, Sisyphus’ landlady also plays an important role as both adversary and ally at the same time. Together they head for the sea in hopes of finally finding Mia and closing the gaps in Sisyphus’ memory.
Days Like Strange Symptoms is a fairytale and a philosophical novel rolled into one, in the tradition of Greek mythology and Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. Leonieke Baerwaldt adds a fresh new perspective to this trope with an account of raising a child with multiple disabilities that is in equal parts sensitive and unflinching.
“Where Baerwaldt’s debut elevated an everyday story into the realm of fairytale – complete with mermaids – in her second novel this marriage between realism and the symbolic is even more convincing. Like a professional assassin, this novel sneaks up on you, taking perfect aim at your head and heart.”
“Baerwaldt shows how we use stories to fool ourselves, but how those same stories also hold the truth. At the same time, you can move between past and present, space and time, life and death. There’s always hope.”
“A strangely wonderful novel.”
