Tiah Beautement interviews Megan Choritz about her debut novel 'Lost Property'

Lost Property

Megan Choritz, Melinda Ferguson Books

5 stars

“This is the part of the story where we pretend to be a family,” begins Megan Choritz’s exquisite novel. From there, readers are plunged into a soulful and captivating fictional memoir of Laine, who has recently ended a 15-year emotionally abusive marriage.

Laine’s tale is about the process of healing: reclaiming, confronting, and stepping into a future. Choritz explains: “[It’s] a discovery, through story, of the bits and pieces of Laine’s life that must be uncovered and examined so she can make sense of who she is and what has happened to her. And then she can start ‘doing’ things.”

It is a process that mirrors the book’s creation. Choritz describes embarking on the novel as “catastrophe, pandemic, therapy”. She says: “I only started feeling better once I was writing, and then reading what I was feeling and had felt.”

The tale’s non-linear structure echoes the memory process, gracefully swimming between her childhood, young adulthood, marriage and present day. “Our memories are tricky, with emotionally charged bits of stretched tape on a loop that keeps playing,” Choritz says. “One moment reminds her of another.”

Accompanying Laine through this emotionally charged journey are the birds. “I have always had affinity with birds,” Choritz says. “I notice them a lot, even though I don’t like the feel of them, but they came for me while writing, these different strangers.” 

The birds serve many roles in the narrative, including protector and witness. However, they were not planned. Choritz says: “Once the first one appeared on the backrest of the car when five-year-old Laine was sick, the rest barged in and sometimes even crowded my thoughts.”

But Laine isn’t the only bird lover. Dora, the domestic worker who served as her surrogate mother, also appreciated them. Dora is badly paid, mistreated by her employers, and rarely gets to see her own children. Yet, she ensures the white child is given love and sheltered from the full brunt of her mother’s neglect. “I don’t know if Dora is a hero or a martyr or a version of Brechtian Mother Courage,” Choritz says.

Laine returns to her memories of Dora for comfort and strength as she grapples with why she married the man she did, and her father’s death. “The wrong parent had died,” Laine thinks, “and left me with an impostor parent, a big adult child who needs looking after even though I am its child.” Laine slowly begins to uncover the connection between her dysfunctional upbringing and disastrous marriage.

“Children who grow up in a house where the mother’s love is absent, for whatever reason, go elsewhere for that love,” Choritz says, “but it is never enough, and it affects one’s sense of self-worth.”

But before Laine can rebuild her self-worth, she must confront the ugly parts of herself. For while she deeply loved Dora, she was a white child growing up in apartheid. Choritz explained that exploring this complicated relationship tainted by racism “gave me insights in how to be ‘unracist’, or at least deal with white privilege, white tears, virtue-signalling. It is a tightrope of discomfort and awkwardness, of making mistakes and being truly sorry for them and hoping you don’t do it again.”

In the end, Laine comes to understand that, as Choritz puts it, “our memories always centre us in the scene”. The lesson that she is only a supporting character in others’ stories leads to growth, empathy and humbleness, enabling her to form new connections.

Lost Property is a stunning tale that skilfully touches on tough themes without being didactic or bleak. Reading this debut novel was like getting up on a dark, bitterly cold winter morning, wrapping myself in a thick, warm blanket and stepping out to witness a magnificent sunrise.

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