Book Review: Bigger Pete

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

This touching spiritual memoir explores a deep family connection that reaches beyond life.

When Elizabeth Bodien began automatic writing exercises, she had no idea where the practice would take her. The goal was merely to tap into her deeper subconscious to create material for the poetry she loved to write. Instead, she found full, profound conversations unfolding across the pages she filled. People she had loved and lost through the years talked to her again. And, more surprising than any of that, her own brother Pete began a discourse with her. 

Pete was not dead, but he had developed Alzheimer’s while in his fifties, compounding the health issues he already had stemming from Down syndrome. As his illness progressed, he became less and less communicative. Once Elizabeth began automatic writing, she found that she could connect with her brother in a way that she had never been able to before.

Bigger Pete is a memoir told through in-the-moment transcribed automatic writing. That is, Elizabeth falls into a half-waking trance and allows her hand to write whatever it will with no conscious input from her. This style of writing creates an immediacy that you don’t often have with memoirs. In some ways, it feels more like a published diary. The emotional upheaval and uncertainty Elizabeth goes through as she comes to terms with her brother’s deteriorating health and impending death is on the page, not something reflected on with the gentling buffer of time. 

Readers will be torn between two camps on this one; those who think that Elizabeth is talking to the spirits of her family members and those who believe she is connecting more deeply to her own psyche, tapping into her fears, worries, and loves, and comforting herself as she watches her brother slip away from her in both mind and body. Elizabeth herself was skeptical at times that these thoughts were authentic. Ultimately, she decided to trust them, and readers will have to make their own minds up. Whichever camp you fall into, the love and dedication Elizabeth has for her baby brother is clear from the writing here.

So much of Bigger Pete explores the close link between life and death. How easily one can catch glimpses past the veil if they only try. Aside from being able to reach the next world with her writing, Elizabeth draws on her own near-death experience to understand the path her brother walks as he vacillates between our world and the next. 

While this is billed as a memoir, it’s almost entirely a transcript of the conversations between Elizabeth and the spirits she communicates with. There are notes scattered throughout when extra information is relevant, but these are sparse. With the way the writing is presented, it misses context. How does Elizabeth know who is talking, for example? Do they write their names before conversing with her? Are their styles of handwriting different to hers? Because the memoir is almost all transcribed, I have no idea whether she’s aware of the voices talking to her in the moment or if she has to go back to read over the script to know what has been said. More explanation between these conversations would have helped me understand so much more about this story.

Bigger Pete is a very different memoir to the ones readers will be familiar with. Experimental, deeply personal, and relying heavily on faith. It is a declaration of love that does not die, even when the people being loved do. A question to the Universe, asking, What more is there? An attempt to understand the things in life that are difficult to accept. Ultimately, Bigger Pete is an intensely psychological journey that Elizabeth has allowed readers to embark on with her.

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