The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein starts with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald,

“The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two points of opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet determined to make them otherwise.”

The focus of the book, Sandra Pankhurst, has this quality in spades. What started as an award winning 2014 essay for Ms Krasnostein, a university law lecturer, is now an award winning 2018 book that frankly had me walking away for extended periods in its unapologetic brutality, then had me jumping back, desperate for a happy ending!

Sandra started life as a male. An adoptive son taken into an abusive household in Footscray where he was subjected to constant verbal and physical abuse from his alcoholic father. From a very young age he was separated from the main house and made to spend much of his childhood malnourished in a small shed in the backyard. 

After discovering that being a female in his teens was overwhelmingly the right thing to do, Sandra set about meeting like-minded individuals in Melbourne. The world of trans-sexual Melbourne was deeply underground in the 70’s and it came with enormous prejudice from not just the general public, but an unforgiving police force.

 Inevitably Sandra was committed to change but by the time he made the decision, he was  married with 2 x children in his mid 20’s. His journey to becoming Sandra involved living through a seedy underworld of Le Girls and prostitution whilst amazingly retaining a gritty determination to maintain high personal standards. Those standards were sorely tested when a psychopath entered the brothel she was working in with a colleague and violently raped both them. This was where I took an extended leave of absence.

Upon returning to the book, I couldn’t believe how Sandra was able to recover from something so traumatic. In a mark of how trans-gender people were treated in those days, the offender was given 8 x years jail and completed 6. You can’t understand just how insufficient a sentence that was until you read the book. Having said that, not much has changed these days.

After several years of prostitution which took her from Melbourne to the tin sheds of Hay St Kalgoorlie to Sydney, Sandra started taking “straight’, less paying jobs. From there she moved into a sector of cleaning which can only be described as Trauma Cleaning. This is what is on the back of Sandra’s business card:

‘Excellence is no Accident’

-Hoarding and Pet Hoarding Clean Up – Squalor/Trashed Properties – Preparing the House for Home Help Agencies to Attend – Odour Control – Homicide, Suicide and Death Scenes – Deceased Estates – Mould, Flood and Fire Remediation – Methamphetamine Clean up – Industrial Accidents – Cell Clean up 

Interspersed between chapters of Sandra’s life are chapters where Krasnostein has accompanied Sandra to client’s appointments and observed her doing what she does best. Despite the inexplicable, abhorrent conditions that Sandra and her team face every day she leads the way with grace, empathy and aplomb. Always dressed immaculately, she treats her clients with the utmost respect and never talks down to them. Having said that, she can be assertive when required because frankly, the conditions you will read about in the book will churn your stomach, so action within timeframes is often critical. 

There are some moments of comedy amongst what appears to be on the surface an extremely dark mode of vocation and there are some redemptive periods with her family that finally lighten things up. Sandra achieved a full sex re-assignment and was married to an older man for 8 x years. Now in her 70’s, she has built an extremely successful business and has mixed socially with both millionaires and utter scum. 

The insights into the world of hoarding are as fascinating as they are terrifying.  To deal with her clients requires an enormous heart and a compassion that can only be derived from someone who has walked in those shoes.

Despite the horrors I confronted in the book, I was actually pleased that Krasnostein didn’t filter it. It’s out there every day and the situations behind the outcomes are complex and very troubling. Many of Sandra’s clients are highly educated but something has gone awry in their lives and in many of those cases they were deserted by their families and friends. Exactly what Sandra experienced all her life.

The Trauma Cleaner won the Victorian Prize for Literature and many more in 2018. It will take you on a challenging journey, some of which you won’t like, some of which you will find utterly compelling and ultimately you will walk away shaking your head at how resilient one person can be.