My 2021 memoir, The Mirror Book, was my account of growing up in a family that had a public face and a troubled private dynamic.<\/a><\/p>\nI had resisted heavy paternal pressure to withdraw the book. CK wanted me to write instead, as he put it, a \u201ccelebratory\u201d memoir. He had labelled me a \u201cscolding fantasist\u201d.<\/p>\n
In January this year, I came across an online reference to family letters having been archived in the National Library. I asked CK about this. He told me the archive contained family emails, and he reassured me, repeatedly, not to worry about it, that \u201call your replies are in there\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said nothing about the statements he and my mother had lodged about The Mirror Book, to which there is no reply in the archive from me.<\/p>\n
Something in his tone made me wonder, and I flew down to Wellington, accessed the archive and found what they\u2019d done. Their statements assert that The Mirror Book is untrue, it is fiction and should be redesignated a novel.<\/p>\n
I assume they did this secretly because to state publicly that The Mirror Book is untrue and a fiction that should be redesignated as a novel would be defamatory. Think of the controversy that blew up this year about the UK memoir The Salt Path, which turned out to be false. A false memoir is a fraud on the reader. It deserves to be, and often is, pulped.<\/p>\n
CK\u2019s Turnbull archive statement begins with him acknowledging that despite his having warned me that the book was no good (a \u201cbad book\u201d, he\u2019d called it) and I would be irreparably damaged by it, I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He writes: \u201cSome will think the critic Karl was wrong \u2013 the book has been a marked success, and is being talked about as the probable \u2018Book of the Year\u2019; but I don\u2019t think I was wrong in that it could have been so much better if it had not been so fashionably self-pitying and self-congratulatory (especially about herself as a parent), and so ruthless on her own parents (particularly the mother) who are shown, even by the account itself, to have inflicted so little real harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
CK asserts that my memoir is a fiction and a fairy story. He writes: \u201cIn that fiction Kay [my mother] is the bad fairy, the wicked stepmother, while I am the bad, domineering Ruler (though also from time to time with the help of champagne a magical one), who torments and bosses around the sad Cinderella Charlotte.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mirror Book was my\u00a0account of growing up\u00a0in\u00a0a\u00a0family that had a\u00a0public face and a troubled private dynamic.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Grimshaw<\/p>\n
CK goes on, \u201cI stress again the beauty of this fairy story, the genuineness of the pain it represents, the brilliance of the writing; but it should have acknowledged its own fictional nature and not presented itself as \u2018truthful\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He describes my writing as \u201ca mental aberration with no foundation in fact\u201d, and a \u201cdelusion\u201d on my part that had been \u201cstoked by the psychotherapist\u201d.<\/p>\n
After referring to the writing of Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard as the literary fashion he says I was influenced by, CK writes: \u201cBut then if the aim was to show yourself as the victim (the one who by the currently prevailing ethic must never be rigorously questioned, doubted or disbelieved), you would need to leave out elements that mitigated the harm done to you. An unloving mother was, in the literary sense, more use to you than one such as Kay who was generous, good fun and always there to help when help was needed. So the real Kay had to become the fictional one.\u201d<\/p>\n
He doubles down on calling me a scolding fantasist. He states: \u201c[Her father] asked her constantly, \u2018Where is the girl who had such a clear sense of reality and its boundaries, and such a marvellous sense of humour \u2013 replaced by this scolding (as it seems to me) fantasist?\u2019 Of course I asked that question. I\u2019m asking it again now.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this is why I can simultaneously affirm that The Mirror Book is a beautiful work of art, and that it is not a truthful one. As a work of fiction it reveals Charlotte\u2019s talent as clearly as anything she has written. But as a work of \u2018non-fiction\u2019 it is unjust and untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to stating that The Mirror Book is \u201cfiction\u201d and a \u201cdelusion\u201d, my father has \u201cdealt with\u201d and dismissed my description of being assaulted by a pool lifeguard when I was 13. (I\u2019d written about being rather under-parented in the 80s.)<\/p>\n
I mentioned in the memoir that if I\u2019d complained, the lifeguard would have been charged. I wrote that my impression was that my parents wouldn\u2019t have been interested. This is borne out in their Turnbull statements. Not only are they not interested, they\u2019re disdainful.<\/p>\n
![\"Charlotte]()
Charlotte Grimshaw with her mother, Kay. Photo \/ Marti Friedlander<\/p>\n
My mother expresses scorn for the Metoo movement and states: \u201cToday the Queen\u2019s Birthday honours are announced. Karl long ago received the highest of those for Services to Literature. In this season his own daughter has encouraged the world to ignore that honour and to dishonour him in the cause of sexual politics. Shame, I say. Forget silly old Literature; it\u2019s marital probity and the protection of women we honour in 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n
CK writes: \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of thing, as it was clearly meant to be, that catches the ear of the present moment. But my guess is that Charlotte made nothing of it at the time because there was nothing to be made. [The lifeguard] was fun, foolish and she could deal with him. She would not have wanted the fun spoiled or the harmless goof sanctioned. But years later he could loom into significance for Dr Sanders.\u201d<\/p>\n
CK never met the lifeguard he describes as a \u201charmless goof\u201d, although he admits they knew about him. (What even is a goof?)<\/p>\n
The lifeguard \u2013 in his 40s \u2013 wrote me love letters, that my parents saw, when I was 13. CK mentions, dismissively, \u201cthe pool was a crowded place\u201d. (The closed first-aid room wasn\u2019t crowded.)<\/p>\n
Post memoir, they never asked me about it. This concept appears to be alien to them: the vulnerability of a 13-year-old girl. Even stranger is CK\u2019s statement that my relationship at 13 with a 40-year-old was \u201cfun\u201d, the man was \u201charmless\u201d, and I \u201ccould handle it\u201d.<\/p>\n
CK writes that I \u201cwouldn\u2019t have wanted the harmless goof sanctioned\u201d. He is acknowledging there was something for which the goof could be sanctioned \u2013 for all the \u201cfun\u201d we were having.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an uncomfortable echo with CK\u2019s complaint that I had lost my sense of humour (of fun) and become \u201ca scolding fantasist\u201d.<\/p>\n
[CK] describes my writing as\u00a0\u2018a\u00a0mental aberration with\u00a0no foundation in fact\u2019, and a \u2018delusion\u2019.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Grimshaw<\/p>\n
These parents were my childhood advisers about sexual interest by middle-aged men. This was what I wrote about, quite calmly and cautiously I thought, in the memoir. There were a lot of things they felt I could handle back before I lost my sense of fun.<\/p>\n
Turning to my consulting of a psychotherapist, CK dismisses entirely the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry, citing a single memoir by a Sunday Times journalist, Oliver Kamm, who tried therapy and found it didn\u2019t help him with clinical depression. (This same journalist can be found online historically approving of the war in Iraq.)<\/p>\n
CK writes: \u201cThis, I suspect, is where \u2018Dr Marie Sanders\u2019 was invaluable. Psychotherapists of the post-Freudian stamp like to find a mother or father, or a sibling, aunt or uncle, who was the up-to-now unrecognised source of your trouble. Oliver Kamm in his book Mending the Mind (pp134-43) describes how a psychotherapist tried to cure his serious, indeed disabling, depression by reaching back into his past \u2013 with results that were worse than useless, briefly damaging \u2026 Fortunately Kamm recognised the mistake soon enough to escape into other treatments involving partly the right kind of drugs \u2026 and partly the conscious alteration of certain habits of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
CK\u2019s statement goes on: \u201cIf \u2018Dr Sanders\u2019 had recommended regular attempts to remember the good things (which were innumerable) about Charlotte\u2019s relations with her mother we might have had the better book that is buried within the published one.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her statement, my mother also cites Kamm\u2019s book. She states that I \u2013 Charlotte \u2013 suffer from \u201cdepressive illness\u201d which she says the psychologist has been \u201cunable to cure\u201d. This is false and defamatory. As Kay knew, I have never in my life suffered from depression.<\/p>\n
My mother writes that it was untrue to describe her as upset by CK\u2019s affairs. She says she wasn\u2019t bothered by them, and she\u2019s sure they gave him \u201ca lot of friendship and fun\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Karl]()
Karl and Kay Stead and Charlotte Grimshaw at\u00a0the family home in Parnell, Auckland, c2017. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
It is baffling how unnecessary it is. Why would parents seek to deny a daughter\u2019s personal story in this way? It\u2019s bizarre and strange.<\/p>\n
It has also been described to me as \u201ccruel\u201d. And it is. It sure is cruel.<\/p>\n
You could say his (and Kay\u2019s) instinct is autocratic. And anti-democratic and effectively anti-intellectual. It certainly doesn\u2019t strike me as intellectually good enough.<\/p>\n
CK\u2019s stance also seems aesthetically questionable. A purely \u201ccelebratory\u201d portrait of a family must be inauthentic. Human life is not black and white; it\u2019s infinitely contradictory and untidy and that\u2019s why it\u2019s interesting. We try to portray it and our attempt is always imperfect. We aim for authenticity by making the best representation we can, and also by acknowledging what we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
In my opinion his demand for a \u201ccelebratory\u201d portrait puts CK on the side of bad art. It\u2019s a stand against open discourse, which is a social good.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also an amazing nerve, given just how censored my memoir was.<\/p>\n
What was my reaction to this? The most obvious word to reach for is anger. But anger tends to diminish the capacity for reasoning. So I decided to take a step back, not to confront. I\u2019ve said nothing about it and gone on being a dutiful and kind daughter to the best of my ability.<\/p>\n
In my imagination, though, I went back to that tiny house in the silent long-ago street, knocked on the door, and consulted the ghost of Janet Frame.<\/p>\n
What do you do when people call you \u201cdelusional\u201d? You write. The answer to the anger, to the intellectual problem of the Turnbull archive, and to the accusation of being delusional, is writing.<\/p>\n
![\"Charlotte]()
Charlotte Grimshaw: “We don\u2019t want \u2018celebratory\u2019 hagiographies by robotic enablers. At least I hope we\u00a0don\u2019t.” Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not dismissing the value of anger. Given the atmosphere of oppression in the world, it\u2019s time to fight back and make some good trouble. We need to defend the individual against non-empathisers everywhere, whether they are tech companies or robots, political tyrants or petty ones.<\/p>\n
My father\u2019s dismissal of my memoir and his defamatory assertion that it\u2019s \u201cfiction\u201d and a \u201cdelusion\u201d is the kind of attempt at control I found elsewhere in the Turnbull archive. I came across a letter in which he instructs me to make sure I tell interviewers that the characters in my 2018 novel Mazarine \u201care not autobiographical\u201d.<\/p>\n
I should note that I haven\u2019t set about asserting that CK\u2019s three autobiographies are untrue works of fiction. Nor that he is \u201cmad\u201d.<\/p>\n
He could have shrugged and said, \u201cSure, it was the 80s, we were preoccupied; we probably weren\u2019t great parents. Fair enough, tell your story.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is notable that CK has wanted to discredit the work not of a stranger but of his own daughter. Objectively it seems extreme.<\/p>\n
So the Turnbull archive now records that The Mirror Book is the untrue delusional product of mental aberration and uncured depressive illness; it is fantasy and a fiction. The Mirror Book is fake news.<\/p>\n
I suggested that the family imposed a regime in which we were not invited to be our authentic selves. If they hadn\u2019t archived these statements, they wouldn\u2019t have confirmed my theory in the emphatic way they have. This seems poignant to me.<\/p>\n
The Mirror Book is not fiction. It was vetted by a specialist QC and is litigation-proof because everything in it is true. I published it to try to make them understand my experiences. This turned out to be a vain hope, but it was sincere.<\/p>\n
If they had publicly challenged my account, they would have opened themselves up to discussion of more extreme, true family details. They appear to have arranged it so they could defame me without sanction. They believed that my life was exclusively \u201ctheir story to tell\u201d.<\/p>\n
Reading the statements, I\u2019m struck by their unified disdain. I hadn\u2019t expected this. We all have an irrational hope that our voice will be heard (the voice of that 13-year-old girl, perhaps). Writing, we are trying to make ourselves understood.<\/p>\n
The irony is worth recording. CK has always been a public intellectual and often a contrarian, yet here he shows no tolerance for dissent. He has championed intellectual rigour yet appears to be demanding that I express myself only in platitudes.<\/p>\n
What do we value when we love an author\u2019s work? We love their voice. If we enjoy novels by, say, Catherine Chidgey or Elizabeth Knox or Eleanor Catton \u2013 or by CK Stead \u2013 it\u2019s because we love the author\u2019s uniqueness. We queue up for them because we want that author, the real thing. We don\u2019t want a mash-up churned out by AI. We don\u2019t want \u201ccelebratory\u201d hagiographies by robotic enablers, either. At least I hope we don\u2019t. That will not do at all.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve described what I discovered in the Turnbull Archive because it\u2019s a complicated human story and that\u2019s what I want to champion. In its own minor way it is a tragedy. It\u2019s an epilogue to a theme of The Mirror Book: the family as a microcosm, where a domineering force just will not stop trying to control what it does not like.<\/p>\n
The microcosm expands out into the world, and the forces we\u2019re up against have the same characteristics. We are sentient individuals with rights. In standing up for those rights we act for our collective good.<\/p>\n
The state of the literary nation may be troubled, but let\u2019s be optimistic about New Zealand writing. We need to defend it and keep it human.<\/p>\n
Remembering the great Janet Frame, let us celebrate our unique New Zealand voices. And let us each value our own authentic understanding of \u201ccelebratory\u201d. <\/p>\n
Charlotte Grimshaw delivered the 2025 Janet Frame Memorial Lecture at the National Library in Wellington on October 14. <\/p>\n
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