Things Nobody Knows But Me

‘Brave, compassionate, searingly honest and funny, this is a memoir in a voice like no other. Amra Pajalić’s love letter to her mother is a book that grabs at your heart and doesn’t let go until the final page.’ ALICE PUNG

When she is four years old Amra Pajalić realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving but sometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. She is frequently sent to hospital and Amra and her brother are passed around to family friends and foster homes, and for a time live with their grandparents in Bosnia.

At sixteen Amra ends up in the school counsellor’s office for wagging school. She finally learns the name for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolar disorder. Amra becomes her mother’s confidante and learns the extraordinary story of her life: when she was fifteen years old Fatima visited family friends only to find herself in an arranged marriage. At sixteen she was a migrant, a mother, and mental patient.

Surprisingly funny, Things Nobody Knows But Me is a tender portrait of family and migration, beautifully told. It captures a wonderful sense of bicultural place and life as it weaves between St Albans in suburban Australia and Bosanska Gradiška in Bosnia. Ultimately it is the heartrending story of a mother and daughter bond fractured and forged by illness and experience. Fatima emerges as a remarkable but wounded woman who learns that her daughter really loves her.

Transit Lounge publisher Barry Scott told Books+Publishing the ‘beautifully written’ memoir was ‘a tender, funny and searingly honest story of a bond between mother and daughter, and of the toll that mental illness takes on an individual, a family and a community’.

‘In adolescence, Pajalic becomes her mother’s confidante and learns the extraordinary story of her life: when she was fifteen years old she visited family friends only to find herself in an arranged marriage. At sixteen, she was a migrant, a mother and a mental patient,’ said Scott.

‘With our interest in diverse voices it is a real bonus for us that the book is set in Melbourne’s western suburbs and explores the largely untouched subject of immigrants affected by mental illness,’ he added.
Read the full Books and Publishing announcement here.

Things was featured on Ezvid Wiki a video wiki in a video titled "Authors Of Brutally Honest And Surprising Memoirs"

Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) shortlisted in 2020 National Biography Award..

Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page

Editorial Reviews:
..told in a distinctive voice, sharp, direct, sometimes bruising. The Australian
Melbourne's Amra Pajalic opens her heart and soul in this memoir of life with a Mum battling mental illness. Herald Sun
.... there's humour and irony here, such as playful echoes of Jane Austen. The Age
...gritty, poignant and at-times humorous book... Weekly Times
Amid the chaos, Pajalić remains alert to beauty and humour. The Saturday Paper

Netgalley Reviews:

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
This was the mentally ill mother daughter story I didn't know I needed. I was surprised by the humor layered throughout such a deeply impactful book.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
I enjoyed this biography of a very human experience: The reflections of an adult who grew up living with a mentally Ill parent and the impact it had on her and those around her. There was also interesting information about her country of origin Bosnia and the then Yugoslavia, A courageous book that can help others living with bipolar family members.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
This is autobiographical book, about the author growing up in two very different worlds, One is Bosnia and the other one is Australia. We mostly follow the author and her mother. We do read about the men in their lives and how they affect the outcomes of their choices, and moves.
Really well written and engaging storytelling. I have never heard of the author, but after reading and listening to her voice telling us her own story, I’m very interested into reading more of her books.
Love how the memories of her mother get easily intertwined with her present, I love how many times she changes her point of view and gets a deeper understanding on the whys of her mum’s motivations.
I highly recommend this one.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Things Nobody Knows But Me” by Amra Pajalic is a deeply personal memoir that delves into the author’s experiences growing up as a Bosnian refugee in Australia. Her honest and intimate storytelling takes readers on a journey through her childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, exploring themes of identity, family, trauma, and the search for belonging.

The memoir is structured around moments in Pajalić’s life, showing her resilience and determination in the face of diversity.
It helps you understand about mental health and bipolar disorder. Pretty sad but beautifully written, truthful and honest. I have not read a book like this before. I wouldn’t mind reading more of this author.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Very compelling! I've been reading a lot of biographies recently and this is another excellent read.
Pajalic's memoir is about her family and childhood in Bosnia and Australia. I was hooked from the first chapter, and found her writing style candid and conversational. She doesn't shy away from confronting sensitive topics such as her mother's disabling mental health issues, and various kinds of misogyny including domestic violence and sexual harassment. I didn't know a lot about Bosnia prior to reading this book, and I am now going to do some further research. It's fascinating to see how past conflicts extend through the time and have such an effect on the present day.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
This is a love letter to her mother. So profound!
Amra walks you through her life’s journey as she deals with a mother struggling with a mental disability. The rawness of this journey compels you to experience her life through fear, innocence, strength, devotion and humor sharing with you intimate parts of her life with her mom, best friend and her attempt to understand her mother’s struggles.
Amra narrates her own story with a calm, soothing voice, great expression and at a pace that enables you to fall deeply into her life events.
Overall, this book allowed me to understand the difficulties of being raised in a relationship with her mom in need of help and guidance. A true picture of living with such a disability.
I greatly recommend this book to all types of readers. I could not walk away from this book. I look forward to more books by Amra Pajalic.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
This was a good book for audio, the author read it and did a wonderful job. She dove into the good and hard parts of her life with a lot of emotion.
Recommended For: Those who want a truthful memoir that includes mental illness of a parent. Also covers trauma the author experienced.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
This, basically, is the story of a young girl, the author Amra, who has a mentally ill mother. Many trials Amra has to face. Her mother is in and out of mental institutions, in and out of relationships. And how this affected the young girl throughout her life. This was a solid memoir, and I thought the author did a great job telling her story.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Quite a harrowing read about growing up with a parent with mistreated, stigmatised mental health problems, living in a patriarchal society that dominates and controls its women, putting all the blame and responsibility on them.
This is quite a shocking book but you can see that most of the damaging behaviour stems from fear.
I would’ve liked to have seen more of what their lives are like now but this is a great book.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
This an audiobook that jumps backwards and forwards from Bosnia to Australia and back as early as the 40s to near present day, but mostly 70s to 90s. Sometimes I was confused by the timeline and which generation was being talked about. But I was intrigued and appalled in equal measure as I listened as a story of mental health issues, parental neglect, genocide and conflict and abuse unfolded. A young girl’s journey from child into adulthood and her relationship in particular with her mother. It captured the different cultures she lived within, and the changes in society. Unfortunately world conflicts seem to continue some of the struggles she went through.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
I like reading memoirs. I listened to the audiobook version and it was well read. This is a memoir of a girl who grew up between Australia and Bosnia. Her mother suffers from bipolar, her father dies young. The heartaches, the ups and downs of her mother’s mental illness, the moves... This author has been through a lot. I appreciate the glimpses into growing up with a bipolar mother and the difficulties that come with it.

To purchase a copy

Hit the button below and select your preferred retailer or from your preferred bookstore. You can also buy signed copies from My Shop.

BOOKSHOPS

Audiobook

Audiobook retail links:
Kobo
Chirp
Nook
Google Play
Scribd
Storytel
Libro Fm
Audiobooks
Spotify

Book Launch Photos

Things Nobody Knows But Me shortlisted for 2020 National Biography Award

Things Nobody Knows But Me has been shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award. There were 89 entries submitted for the Award this year.
As a shortlisted author I will receive $2,000. The winner of the overall prize will receive $25,000 and there is also a $5,000 prize for the best debut biography/memoir.
As we are currently in lockdown I did what any person would do, I dressed up and made a video about the announcement.
#thingsnobodyknowsbutme #booknews

Add Things Nobody Knows But Me to your Goodreads list

2020 Express Media Toolkits-Writing Family, Writing Illness

2020 Brimbank Writers and Readers Festival

Reviews

26/07/19 "This is a moving story of the bond between mother and daughter, and a sometimes uncomfortable account of how that bond is tested, broken and repaired, over and over again. It is a frank account of family, and how your family can both endlessly disappoint but also show great loyalty. It is also a fascinating insight into a bicultural family, and how the ties of the old country can conflict with the pull of a new homeland." Cass Moriarty

Worlds apart but together
Newspaper
July 20, 2019 | Australian, The/Weekend Australian/Australian Magazine, The (Australia)
Author: Phillip Siggins | Page: 21 | Section: Review
995 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1150, grade level(s): 9 10 11-12
Things Nobody Knows But Me By Amra Pajalic Transit Lounge, 272pp, $29.99

Love, Luck and the Demon By John F. Roe Wakefield Press, 314pp, $34.95

Amra Pajalic’s memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me is a window on growing up in two cultures, an experience shared by many Australians. In this instance growth is shadowed by mental illness and domestic violence. It is told in a distinctive voice, sharp, direct, sometimes bruising.

Pajalic, with frankness and honesty, tells of living under the care of her widowed, manic-depressive mother, Fatima. Our first major encounter with Fatima is during a full-blown bipolar episode:

"Mum suddenly stopped and cocked her head as if she was listening to someone. She dropped the sheet in her hands and approached the tall shelves my father had built to store his tools, which ran up the wall of the house and reached the roof … ‘‘Yes, Allah, I know you are looking after me and I will prove it to everyone,’’ Mum said to God. She closed her eyes as she took her first step, climbing the shelf as if it was a ladder."

In St Albans, on the western edge of Melbourne, Fatima climbs to paradise with crazed self-confidence while the child looks on, terrified, but also curious to see if Allah will reveal himself.

Her mother’s hospitalisations force Pajalic and her brother Haris into temporary shelter such as the houses of family friends and foster homes, but in the main they are able to return to Fatima, who struggles to care for them as best she can. The children are resilient, finding in their innocence, amid the chaos, opportunities for growth and even happiness.

Pajalic’s childhood is spent in St Albans. But when one of Fatima’s boyfriends stalks them, the family flees to Fatima’s homeland, Bosnia. In Bosanska Gradiska, Pajalicand Haris live under the rule of their villager grandparents.

In due course Pajalic refuses to return to Australia with Fatima and Fatima’s new husband because here she finds relative stability. She also discovers friendships, her emerging sexuality, and the violence, illiteracy and fury of life in this almost medieval Bosnian village.

Everyone knows everyone’s business and behind-doors violent punishment is dispensed for crimes real and imagined. The grandmother bears the scars of a brutal beating. Violence breeds further violence and Pajalic witnesses the same grandmother smothering Pajalic’s cousin, Sanela:

"She covered Sanela’s mouth and nose with her hand and squeezed her cheeks tightly. My grandmother held her hand there for what seemed like forever … I sat silently on the couch, too scared to look directly at my grandmother lest she turn her rage on me. But she didn’t. My brother and I were the prized grandchildren … while my cousins were Vlahs, a derogatory term for Christian."

Inevitably Pajalic too receives cruel, mindless punishment and this spurs her return to Australia.

The clash of faiths within the family reflects national events: the Bosnian war hasn’t begun but the violence and oppression of village life, only partially understood by the youthful Pajalic, anticipates its horrors.

Part of the strength of this narrative is the dual focus. We see the experience from both the growing child’s perspective and from the mature Pajalic’s point of view. While the child lives in the moment, the mature voice oversees and records, is matter-of-fact, non-judgmental, sometimes amused. Even the brutal grandmother is accepted once Pajalic and the reader understand the circumstances of her forced marriage and the culture within which it took place.

Returning to Australia, Pajalic experiences the clash of cultural identities. She discovers the name of her mother’s illness and learns about Fatima’s first migration to Australia, aged 15, and starts to understand. Fatima emerges as flawed, abused but a survivor, one who is ultimately cherished and loved.

Things Nobody Knows But Me is powerfully engaging. The reader is kept in tension, fearful for the child Pajalic and her teenage self, for Fatima and Haris. And Pajalic is masterful in using the contrasting landscapes of St Albans and Bosanska Gradiska to full dramatic and ironic effect.

Herald Sun Review

The Age Review 01/06/19

30/05/19 Review in Weekly Times
MENTAL health, foster care, migration and the bond between mothers and daughters are touched on in Things Nobody Knows But Me.
The 270-page book is a memoir by author Amra Pajalic, which bridges St Albans in Melbourne’s west to Bosnia in Eastern Europe.
This gritty, poignant and at-times humorous book will make readers feel open-hearted to the author and her experiences.
Pajalic explains that the events she writes about did occur, but she has added fictional aspects and compressed timelines.
Early in the book Pajalic recalls her childhood dealing with her mother Fatima’s breakdowns, later diagnosed as bipolar.
Pajalic spent her early childhood raised by her disciplinarian grandparents in Bosnia, and later in Australia in the part-time care of Fatima.
Things Nobody Knows But Me is dedicated to her mother “and all
the women who came before me whose lives were full of sacrifice,
so that mine could be full of choices”.
Pajalic, a high school teacher, is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at La Trobe University. Her debut novel The Good Daughter won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award.
Writing this book must have taken courage and for that reason alone it is worthy of a place on readers’ book shelves.
— Sarah Hudson

18/05/19 Review in The Saturday Paper by Shu-Ling Chua
Things Nobody Knows But Me opens with Amra Pajalić learning, at age 16, that her mother’s illness is in fact bipolar disorder, and proceeds to build back to this moment. Through interlinked vignettes, she presents complex portraits of maternal grandmother Adevija, mother Fatima and her child self, and examines the fractured relationships between all three. The episodic structure compartmentalises key events, supporting Pajalić to juggle multiple perspectives effectively, while also providing much-needed emotional respite. As she pieces together her family’s past from their accounts – Adevija’s marriage is the result of blackmail and Fatima’s is arranged – the author experiences, and demonstrates, the power of storytelling.
Mental illness continues to be stigmatised within many migrant communities, its causes and treatment misunderstood. Pajalić recalls the family friends who stepped up to care for her and her brother, as well as the judgement her mother faced, likening Fatima’s experience to being “exiled again”. The family’s relocation, from St Albans in Melbourne’s west to Bosanska Gradiška and back, offers a rare glimpse into rural life and prejudices in 1980s Bosnia, before the war that would break up Yugoslavia.
Amid the chaos, Pajalić remains alert to beauty and humour. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman with a mental illness must be in want of a husband,” she quips, “to facilitate her escape from familial domination.” Forced to fend for herself from a young age, Pajalić is alert, too, to the living situations of her playmates, some of whom are abused by their guardians. This empathy, together with Pajalić’s knack for writing unruly young characters, suggests the memoir will resonate with teens as well as adults.
The outcome of Fatima’s correct diagnosis is ultimately condensed into a paragraph, life-changing but an afternote. Given the memoir’s emphasis on relationships, this decision is understandable; it does, however, make for an abrupt conclusion.
Pajalić has spent her life protecting her mother, while also bearing witness to her strength. Fatima, like so many women, has wrestled for control of her fate, making innumerable sacrifices for her children. Bipolar disorder has shaped their lives, but as Pajalić defiantly makes clear, it defines neither her mother nor their relationship.
Shu-Ling Chua
Transit Lounge, 272pp, $29.99
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 18, 2019 as "Amra Pajalić, Things Nobody Knows But Me". Subscribe here.

5/5/2019 Review by Erich Mayer on ArtsHub
Amra Pajalić has written this memoir in the style of a novel. She makes frequent use of dialogue and describes in detail how people thought and felt. She avers that ‘while every event depicted in this book did occur, I have used fictional devices to recreate dialogue and setting. . . . I have also compressed timelines slightly in order to create narrative flow.’ That this memoir has been partially fictionalised, however, does not detract from its sincerity or frankness.
Pajalić recounts her childhood exploits and relationships with no holds barred. This includes her sexual experiences, conveyed as fully as the other events that shape her life. That sexual abuse occurred then, as now, is hardly a surprise. A friend tells the teenage Pajalić, ‘My uncle comes and plays with me while Mum is at work. He takes off our pants and we do stuff.’ This is the same friend who shows her how to steal chocolate bars.
Pajalić spent many years of her childhood in Bosnia, being brought up by her grandparents, who held old-fashioned rules about how a young girl should behave. They cared for her in their own way, even if that included instances of painful physical punishment. Breakfast was ready for her and everyone in the household when they rose because her grandmother would start her long day by getting up at five in the morning to milk the cows, collect the eggs and prepare food.
However, most of Pajalić’s youth was spent in Australia, and in the part-time care of her mother, Fatima. Many of Pajalić’s recollections feature her mother with whom she had a strange and difficult relationship, overwhelmingly because, unknown to her, Fatima was afflicted with bipolar disorder. Fatima’s illness was mis-diagnosed for many years which resulted in her being frequently in and out of hospital, and in being subjected to incorrect and damaging mistreatment. When she was not ill, Fatima was a loving parent, although at times her desire for a suitable partner got in the way of her other relationships.
There are many reasons that can motivate a person to write a memoir. It could be to record past friends and family, it could be to set the record straight on events in which they played a role, it could be for self-aggrandisement or to emphasise a point of view. Pajalić’s motivation to write her memoir is clear from her dedication of Things Nobody Knows But Me:
'Dedicated to my mother, Fatima, and all the women who came before me whose lives were full of sacrifice, so that mine would be full of choices. And for my daughter, Sofia, who stands on the shoulders of these strong women and is able to reach for the sky because of them.'
Pajalić has succeeded in making her point with this memoir. Because of the strong women in her past, who did the best for her in difficult situations, she was able to make good choices for her career and marriage and is confident that her daughter will have even better prospects than she had.
Rating: 4 stars ★★★★
Things Nobody Knows But Me
By Amra Pajalić

Transit Lounge Publishing
Format: ISBN :978-1-925760-20-0 Trade PB 272pp
Rights: World
Release / Publication Date: 01 /05 /2019
Categories: Forthcoming, Non-Fiction
$29.99

On the Radio

10/07/19 On RRR 102.7 Backstory talking to Melissa Cranenburgh about my memoir and the catharsis and trauma of writing my memoir. Listen here.
23/05/19 On Life Matters talking to Hilary Harper about my memoir and the seminal moment when a teacher helped me discover what my mother’s mental illness is called.
15/05/19 Had the privilege of being interviewed on 3CR Community Radio Published or Not segment by David McClean about my book. I loved his introduction: “dislocation, dysfunction and depression--these are terms we don’t usually like to associate with a child’s upbringing but Amra Pajalic fathoms the forces that shaped her life in her autobiography Things Nobody Knows But Me.” You can listen online on this link from 11.55 minutes to hear my interview.

In the media

04/06/19 Featured in an article on News.com.au ‘Mum locked us in a room — then the police took her’: Our frightening family secret
20/05/19 Featured On Writers Victoria website Q&A.
19/05/19 Featured as Meet the Author on website In Their Own Write.
04/05/19 Very excited to be featured on the Booklovers Review website to share the inspiration behind my new book Things Nobody Knows But Me.
/05/19 Featured in Good Reading Magazine, Highs and Lows. Photo below.
28/04/19 Featured in The Age with the four books that changed me to promote my memoir. Here's a link to read the full feature.
27/04/19 Interview on the website Female.com.au about the inspiration behind the book.