The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

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The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp - the autobiography of a defiantly effeminate gay man with perfect recall

Compelling reading...This book reads like an unabashed love letter to Pankhurst with the first-time author, embedded for years in her subject’s life, effusive in her adoration.’ Courier-Mail I didn’t do any research on Sandra prior to completing my listen and I’m glad I didn’t. After I was through, I did some Googling and found some great articles and interviews. I’m not including links because I think it’s better to go in not knowing much beyond the blurb but wanted to mention that they are out there. I thought about readers TRYING to imagine cleaning those homes - and thinking that 99% of us know they could never do it. Sandra cleans them with love.Sandra had an awful childhood. She was adopted through the Catholic church to a family in West Footscray, Melbourne. The father was an extremely violent alcoholic and both parents were physically and emotionally abusive. She was forced to live in a bungalow that her father built and she was excluded from the family home. They would deny her food and access to the bathroom.

Homicides, suicides, drug busts, deaths, hoarding, squalor and infestation, sometimes decades of neglect — all are a regular part of STC’s workday: “All the shitty jobs that no one really wants to do,” says Sandra. Because her own experiences have acquainted her intimately with trauma, she sees her profession as a way to ease the suffering of others, approaching even the most horrendous situations without judgment. Though the sex work she does and the drugs she takes and her overriding need for constant company frequently mean that she is not in control of herself or her environment, she is excellent at acting otherwise to conceal any vulnerability. So she does not cry in public and, while she might comment in the same tone as one comments on traffic that she is experiencing pain or discomfort, and through, of course, she feels pain deeply, she never actually shows it or make any practical adjustments to accommodate it."Sarah Krasnostein has been following Sandra and her work for a good length of time, and here in this book she tells us of Sandra's life, and the clients that she meets. I related to much of Sandras' thinking as I am a survivor of domestic violence as a child and in my marriage of 17 years. How we learn to shut down, cope with PTSD, depression and anxiety and more and sometimes not just getting through the day but the next hour, second by second. Peter's adoptive family treated him abysmally (think beatings, starvation, isolation). The recollections shared were difficult to read. As Krasnostein so eloquently phrased it "In the taxonomy of pain there is only the pain inflicted by touching and the pain inflicted by not touching. Peter grew up an expert in both. " As an adult Peters self imposed isolation from his wife and two sons was traumatic. So too the physical and social ramifications of being transgender, reinventing himself from male to female. With limited options she turned to drugs and alcohol, earnt her money through sex work and prostitution. Sandra was brutally raped and assaulted then later still became critically ill but was ruled inelligible for a lung transplant. All traumatic events dealt with and put behind her. She goes into homes of people who have been broken, and cleans through their pain’: Sandra Pankhurst. Photograph: Text Publishing During my time with Sandra, I met a bookbinder, a sex offender, a puppeteer, a cookbook hoarder, a cat hoarder, a wood hoarder […] I heard Sandra bend and flex language into words and idioms she made her own: “supposably”, “sposmatically”, “hands down pat!”

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner , The Believer and the Quarterly Essay, Not Waving, Drowning (2022). She has a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in New York and Victoria. Sarah has been awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Australian Book Industry Award for General Non-Fiction, the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the Dobbie Literary Award, and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She was a finalist for the Walkley Book Award, the National Biography Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the Wellcome Book Prize (UK). In 2022, she was awarded the Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism. She is a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper and The Monthly , and her work can be found in a variety of publications in Australia, America, and the UK. Surely the most original non-fiction book of the year…Written with warmth, humour and sensitivity, The Trauma Cleaner is utterly fascinating.’ Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster is the fascinating biography of one of the people responsible for tidying up homes in the wake of natural—and unnatural—catastrophes and fatalities.

Compelling reading...This book reads like an unabashed love letter to Pankhurst with the first-time author, embedded for years in her subject’s life, effusive in her adoration.’ We specialize in the unpleasant tasks that you need to have taken care of. Performing a public service as vital as it is gruesome, Sandra is one of the world’s unofficial experts on the living aspects of death. So much is clear from her brochure, which also showcases her intense practicality. Quoth the Brochure of Pankhurst: The most original non-fiction book of the year…Written with warmth, humour and sensitivity, The Trauma Cleaner is utterly fascinating.’ I didn’t even know that this was going to be the story that it was. I thought it was going to be the ins and out of cleaning crime scenes. It was that, too.....but really just a one part. It’s SANDRA WHO STAYS WITH ME....