Book Review: Messy

Title: Messy

Author: Frances Dall'Alba

Quote: "Would 'Princess Klutz' ever leave her?" 

About a hundred years ago the British colonies used to have significant populations of what were called Remittance Men--the sons of rich people who sent these young men money, regularly, to stay in a different country and not be such an embarrassment to their parents. 

In this short story Taeger is a latter-day Remittance Woman, nicknamed "Princess Klutz" and encouraged to move to Australia. Where she runs a car into a wall, people assure her that the wall needed repairs anyway, and the policeman who helps her out of the car asks her for a date. 

Chronic klutziness has a scientific explanation. Damage to a part of the cerebrum, often incurred by a fever just before or after birth or by injury during or shortly after birth, can cause loss of control of some or all conscious muscle activity. When this is constant and conspicuous it's diagnosed as cerebral palsy. It can be a complete disability or a minor inconvenience, depending on the extent of damage, and may or may not be accompanied by damage to the part of the brain involved in thinking. (Some cerebral palsy patients never learn to read; some become writers.) When the part of the brain damaged is very small, however, the person may not be referred to a doctor but just be conspicuously clumsy. Sometimes only a few muscles--e.g. the writing fingers on one hand--tend to stiffen or twitch unpredictably, and the problem is noticed only when the person does specific things, like writing...or changing gears. There is no real cure for this bit paying attention, both in the sense of learning to find a mental zone of relaxed alertness when focussed on tasks and in the sense of noticing individual food and chemical sensitivities, can reduce the damage done. However, because the condition is not genetic but is produced by injury, clumsy people (and people with disabling cerebral palsy) can have healthy children. They can be good parents, whether or not they can risk carrying the baby.

Anything can happen and, without specifically limiting the invitation to reckless drivers only, readers are invited to visit the Australian town called Millaa Millaa, said to be an indigenous word for waterfalls, the town's main attraction.