Book Review
Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath
by S. Shakthidharan
S. Shakthidharan is an award-winning playwright whose credits include the internationally acclaimed multilingual work Counting and Cracking and The Wrong Gods, which is included in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2025 season. With Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath, Shakthidharan has made a seamless translation into the memoir genre.
Shakthidharan, who is of Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry, describes himself in both the book and in his work elsewhere as a storyteller. In the prologue of Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath he is asked for a chronological retelling of his life and he answers that lives are not remembered like that, but rather in ‘bits and pieces’. What follows is an engaging narrative where Shakthidharan one by one addresses family members (with one special addition) to share his memories with them (and us). This provides coherence as the stories intersect through time, people and places, as well as thematically. The subjects are diverse: from the horror of the Sri Lankan Civil War to moving houses (literally), falling in love to a gifted dancer’s career being cut short, and arguing over household finances to reuniting with an estranged father. Shakthidharan writes with both honesty and empathy, especially in relation to his mother. She is one of several key female figures who provide insight into why he is so adept at writing female characters in his plays.
I haven’t read a memoir in a while, and this was such a satisfying return to the genre from both an emotional and stylistic standpoint. Already highly praised by writers such as Alice Pung, Shankari Chandran and Omar Musa, Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath has been commissioned to inspire a program of events at the Powerhouse Parramatta in 2026. So, once again, like his plays, Shakthidharan’s words (and stories) will have life beyond the page.
