children's fiction
Robyn Sheahan-Bright
Mark Svendsen
Snigger James on Grey
Lothian $14.95pb, 190pp,
0 7344 0042 X
Phil Cummings
A Piece of Mind
Random House $12.95pb, 218pp,
0 09 183951 3
Mark Svendsen
MARK SVENDSEN'S FIRST teenage novel, Snigger James on Grey, is one of great subtlety and power. In it he's achieved the difficult feat of creating a synthesis between the metaphorical exploration of feeling and relationships and the explication of genuinely pertinent teenage preoccupations. He has the rare capacity to re-create the voices of teenagers drawing on his own experiences, growing up in a central Queensland town, in a laconic and yet poetic way. The fifteen-year-old characters -- Steven, Selwyn and Kelly -- are pitched accurately with sensitivity and humour. Their tribulations in dealing with the aftermath of an incident which demands honesty and self-evaluation of them, is complicated by the boys' rivalry over Kelly's favours.
Selwyn's Aboriginality is another factor which contributes to the complexity of the issues being explored here. Steven is visited by two 'ghostly' voices from his immediate past -- the 'Uncle' and his recently deceased grandfather, both offering unlooked-for advice. The character of the yarning 'Uncle' is a truly monumental one, with antecedents in the rich veins of Australian folk literature. The novel's theme -- that people are never white or black but 'shades of grey' -- is evinced via these characters struggling to make sense of a less than perfect world, and of their less than perfect selves.
The book opens with a 'dramatis personae' cueing readers to the fact that this is to be a drama 'acted out' for them. Chapter headings (for example, A Flour Bag Full of Grief, House Full of Weapons, Billy-Bong) further cement the idea that this is about more than literal meaning.
It's a book in which the characters' voices are orchestrated in a harmony. Music provides a structure for the 'action' and gives a rhythm and an undercurrent that this is more than a novel about action; it's about 'emotion in motion'. Plot and theme are emotionally connected by the death of Snigger and the death of 'the Boy' (the re-birth of Steven) creating a dramatic tension throughout. The book shares with novels such as Philip Gwynne's Deadly Unna a capacity to make the universal issues of regionalism and reconciliation, meaningful realities in everyday Australian life. It dwells on the immensely important need to reconcile oneself with the past and with the older members of one's family in order to forge a future self-identity.
One of the best, most striking aspects of Svendsen's prose is its poetic expression of feelings. There is a real toughness and a delicacy about the way he circles around the idea of death and makes it moving and humorous. (Few writers such as Judith Clarke make use of humour in this way in Australian YA fiction.) For example, he juxtaposes the boy's feelings: 'The boy checked the coffin not to pay his last respects but, remembering horses, to make sure that no one closed the stable door after he had bolted.' with the uncle's musing: 'The dead sleep so gently and soft. Soft and gentle beside the murmuring, murmuring world.' This is a genuinely exciting work which awoke an immediately passionate response in me, and one which I have not, on a second reading, found to have waned.
Both Snigger James on Grey and A Piece of Mind are about individual action and resisting group pressures to conform. Steven hides behind the persona 'boy' and Matt is driven by whatever his two bullying friends, Chunk and Fraser, want him to do. In A Piece of Mind, Matt's lack of will is ripe for exploitation by visiting aliens from the planet Carth, who prey on such minds, taking them over. Both writers use the extraordinary to explore the levels beneath individual action.
Steven's 'visitors' are deceased; Matt's are aliens! Lord Rah and his daughter Reo enjoy toying with Matt's mind, forcing him to do either malicious or dangerously self-destructive things. The gravity of the matter is suggested by Lord Rah, 'If only the small being knew he held the future of his world behind his eyes.' If Matt's mind proves resistant then the aliens will move on. Fortunately Jool, Reo's friend, likes Matt instinctively, and tries to save him. These events highlight Matt's problem -- he finds it impossible to resist the insinuations and taunts of his friends to lure others (like his small brother, Tyson and neighbour, Libby), into dangerous situations.
This is not a 'comforting' story, for some incidents are downright scarifying. Cummings's spare, sometimes staccato delivery conveys the tension and edginess felt by Matt extremely accurately. His persecution of nice old Mr Barker is also a grim reminder of how far weakness can drive each of us off-course. The ending in which the boys are reconciled is not a traditional 'happy' ending', for it sounds a poignant note of loss, too; battles between planets rarely leave everyone unscathed.
Cummings has crafted a finely balanced treatise on moral responsibility with the immediacy of a mystery/adventure. These writers show promise of excellent future offerings. Svendsen, I predict, has much to offer in creating thoughtful, lyrical works exploring the intersections between character, culture and landscape in a voice which has rarely sounded so uniquely in recent fiction.