SUE ORR Loop Tracks. Reviewed by Mary Garden

Sue Orr’s new novel brings a timely personal dimension to debates around abortion.

Sue Orr’s Loop Tracks has been a bestseller in New Zealand since its release in 2021. Published by Victoria University Press (now Te Herenga Waka University Press), the novel has flown over the ditch, picked up by Terri-ann White of Upswell Publishing. It is bound to find enthusiastic readers in Australia.  

In June 2019, Charlie Lowry is living a tightly contained life in Wellington with her 18-year-old grandson, Tommy, who has been with her since he was four. Suddenly, Charlie’s world is interrupted by the unexpected intrusions of Tommy’s first girlfriend, Jenna, and the father he has never known, Jim, who is a drug peddler and a manipulator. The narrative courses through the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic ‒ the first cases in New Zealand were detected in March 2020 ‒ and ends with the elections in October that year.

There is another story threaded throughout Loop Tracks. Although she has tried to bury it, Charlie finds herself drawn back to a period in her past, although some of it is a blur. She reflects on her younger self and the abandonment she felt during this time.  

In April 1978 Charlie’s uptight mother suspects her 15-year-old daughter may be pregnant:

The air in the room is dense with soured milky tea and an odour that can only be coming from the lumpen shape at the end of the bed that is a mother but not acting like one. The mother makes a new noise and despite the thick silence, it takes a few seconds for the girl to work it out: it is the grinding of teeth. Her mother is grinding her teeth. The girl makes it to the bathroom just in time.

Charlie, whose birthday is in a few weeks, thinks the idea that she is pregnant is stupid, because ‘it can’t happen on your first time … everyone knows that’. 

It is the worst time to be pregnant. In 1977, New Zealand’s first abortion clinic, the Auckland Medical Aid Centre, which had opened in 1974, was forced to close its doors after the passing into law of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act. Charlie’s parents decide to send Charlie to Sydney to have an abortion, ‘to have her situation sorted out’.

The Pan Am flight is delayed on the tarmac. Sitting at the back of the plane with two others who also have appointments in Sydney, Charlie distracts herself by reading about Princess Caroline’s upcoming wedding in Monaco, holding her breath at the loveliness of it all, the fairytale life just beginning. She lies to Renee, next to her, that she’s in love with her boyfriend Dylan and they are getting married. The truth is the pregnancy was a one-night stand, his name might or might not be Dylan, and after that night she never sees him again.

After several hours, the passengers are told there is a further delay and are given the option to disembark and reschedule for another day if they wish. Charlie gets off the plane.

I can only watch the girl that I was. Sixteen, pregnant, with her head full of romance and a brain yet to develop the parts that tether her to reality, she stands up … with her juvenile brain exploding with Monaco fireworks and ‒ even now ‒ I can’t fathom what else, she picks up her little bag and joins the queue of passengers walking down the aisle.

Charlie’s son, Jim, is whisked away from her at birth, and even though she has to pretend nothing has happened, for years she can’t help ‘peering into the faces of the children on the street’. Is this one hers? In 1996, he turns up at her doorstep, an angry young man, and makes her life a nightmare for a while. He is physically and emotionally abusive, using and dealing drugs.

Towards the end of the book, Charlie tells Jenna, ‘I wish I hadn’t brought the person he’s become into the world.’ However, she says, Tommy’s arrival in her life ‘turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me’.

Charlie loves Tommy, even though he can be challenging and is probably on the autism spectrum. Her skin crawls when she discovers he is interested in the Voice for Life organisation, not only their anti-euthanasia campaign, but their anti-abortion work. She lunges and sweeps a sea of paper off his table:

‘Do you have any idea, Tommy, about the misery these people cause?’

I’m aware I’m shouting now, that my voice has found the guttural pitch of a frenzied small dog, but it’s a vague knowing. As though it might not be me after all, it might be a woman further down the street who has finally lost the plot under lockdown stress … 

‘You have no right to an opinion about what women should or shouldn’t do with their bodies.’

This novel about choice and control is very timely. It is alarming to watch from afar as the crisis in America has unfolded since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, opening the door for states to ban abortion outright. Male lawmakers continue to believe they know best when it comes to abortion and women’s reproductive rights. They don’t.

Despite the extra shipping cost, I ordered a copy of Loop Tracks from New Zealand as soon as it was released over there and have read it several times. It’s beautifully written and very moving. It rang so true that at times I felt I was reading a memoir. I felt deeply for Charlie as she tries to make sense of her past. There are bits she can’t remember, that are just blank. She tries to be kind to herself and give herself a break from the girl she once was, but the memories, the choice she made, the ‘dirty smudge’ of shame, won’t leave her alone.

This book struck a chord for me for various reasons. I grew up in New Zealand and left in 1973. The country lagged behind Australia in many respects and many of us decided to leave for good. In 1976, I fell pregnant and because of my circumstances decided to have an abortion. I’ve never regretted it for a second. How lucky I was to have had this option.  

After my mother died in 2012, I discovered she had had a baby son in 1944; like Charlie, she was forced to have him adopted. Mum’s son ‒ he became a famous footballer ‒ tracked her down in 1996, but she rejected him. I was horrified to read a letter Mum wrote to his wife saying that having him had ‘destroyed her life’. It is clear to me now that her sorrow, her shame, impacted all of us. It has been said that mothers who give up their children for adoption often suffer chronic bereavement for the rest of their lives. The trauma of forced adoption far outweighs the trauma of abortion.

The book is not just heavy excavation of intergenerational trauma: there are a few delightful substories, which made me smile, even laugh out loud. And the ending is full of hope. When I had finished reading, all I wanted to do was to go for a loop walk in the bush up the back of my place, just as Charlie sets out to do, up the easy path.

A simply wonderful book.

Sue Orr Loop Tracks Upswell Publishing 2022 PB 336pp $29.99

Mary Garden is an author and freelance journalist, with a PhD in journalism. Her book Sundowner of the Skies was shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s History Award and her memoir The Serpent Rising won the 2021 High Country Indie Book Award. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications including The Humanist, The Australian Financial Review, The Australian, The Guardian, Meanjin, and New Zealand Geographic. In January 2022, after 45 years in Queensland, she moved to regional Victoria to be closer to her daughter and her granddaughters. You can find her on Twitter @marygarden  

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Tags: abortion, forced adoption, intergenerational traume, New Zealand writers, Sue | Orr, women writers