Tremor by Sonya Voumard

Like Ravenous girls, last year’s winner of the 20/40 Publishing Prize awarded by Finlay Lloyd Publishing, this year’s non-fiction prize winner, Tremor, is a similarly very personal account of a life growing up with an unacknowledged difference, a personal challenge that others are largely unaware of. For Sonya Voumard it is her life living with a ‘movement disorder’ or tremor that causes her hands to shake and her head to nod in a ‘Yes, yes’ movement. Only later does she learn that there is a label and an explanation for the tremor; it is dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that causes muscles in the body to contract or spasm involuntarily. There is an innovative new treatment available, magnetic resonance image guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS), basically brain surgery, shaved head, an expensive procedure. Voumard shares her journey leading up to the medical procedure and its aftermath.

For me, reading her account, it was striking how much her tremor dominated her life; she shares all the little avoidances she has to undertake in order to hide her disability, sitting on her hands, avoiding carrying coffee cups, excusing herself from eating meals, so many adjustments in order to appear competent both in daily life and in her career. Yet later when she asks friends whether they noticed her shakes, generally the response was that they just accepted it as part of who she was. It is a reminder of the dissonance between one’s interior world and the persona perceived by others. Nevertheless that does not in any way discount the daily ordeals that so many people with a disability encounter as they go through life.

Voumard shares anecdotes from her life, not in any particular chronological order, as though they are being recounted randomly to a friend, building a picture, drawing us in, until the final pages about life after her surgery, which not a miraculous cure-all, but is definitely an improvement, making life more manageable. There is still a little shaking, but it’s a shaking that is accepted as an aspect of her identity.

Voumard’s story adds to our understanding of difference and diversity, creating empathy for the experience of others. This makes it a worthy prizewinner and an excellent book to recommend to readers.

Themes: Disability, Dystonia, Identity, Journalism.

Helen Eddy