My Accidental Career, Brenda Niall. TEXT PUBLISHING. ISBN 9781922458148.
In many ways this wonderful book is a story of Catholic Melbourne and beyond. Education at Genazzano Convent, an interview with Archbishop Mannix, first job with Bob Santamaria, travel to Ireland, for example. But it also led to pioneering positions teaching at universities and to a marvellous set of literary biographies.
Brenda Niall writes beautifully. The quality lies in the clarity of her thought, her exact choice of words, the alternation of story and reflection and the self-effacement that creates a direct link between the reader and the work itself.
Her writing has the rare gift of simplicity. The precision of the title is characteristic of the book as a whole. It refers to a career, the items that might form part of a CV – the relationships and activities that constitute one’s public life. She describes her career as accidental because it was so dependent on events, on relationships through the encouragement and patronage of others.
An accidental career, however, is not an accidental life. Our lives have gifts, interests and attractions of their own that develop in response to circumstances. Niall’s asthma as a child nurtured an observation of others and a passion for reading and good writing. Her interest in people, observation and gift of writing are displayed in the excerpts from travel diaries at different stages of her life. These reveal the life that feeds into the career.