Glenorchy Boy is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read.
I suppose people who grow up in well known cities get used to having their neighbourhoods described in books but, until now, I’ve never come across a book set so specifically exactly where and when I grew up.
It was moving, spooky, and more than a little uncomfortable to read this novel set in 1973 in the back streets of Glenorchy, Claremont, and Chigwell, with occasional forays into North Hobart, the Hobart Courthouse, and the Royal Hobart Hospital.
Sure, I’ve read books set in Hobart and surrounds before, notably those by Mary-Lou Stephens, but this was much closer to my personal experience.
To be clear, Glenorchy Boy is a novel about a teenaged boy getting by in the very rough suburbs north of Hobart, where casual violence, excessive alcohol, bullying, petty theft, and abusive behaviour were pretty much the norm.
Alan Skidmore has hopes of somehow getting out of this milieu into a better life but he keeps getting dragged back down into the gutter, not least by his own poor behaviour. He has dreams of becoming a poet but stumbles through a number of jobs he’s no good at. Society itself seems determined to keep him where he is.
He’s no better at relationships, neither with his broken father, an alcoholic since Alan’s mother walked out on them, nor with the girls he has tentative desires for. Instead he hangs out with the worst other young men, and inevitably ends up in scrapes with the police. His Probation Officer is almost ready to give up on him.
I won’t spoil how his efforts to improve his life work out.
I will say, though, that I identified with almost every single thing that happened to him, every opportunity denied, every violence inflicted on him, and his seeming inability to get out.
Every street name, every building, every incident was freakishly familiar to me.
As far as I know, John Dale didn’t live the life he describes. He’s a Sydney-based crime novelist and the closest he’s come before this is a fictionalised account of his father’s experiences working for the Hydro Electric in Tasmania in the 1940s. I can verify that his research skills are impeccable – I’d love to know what inspired to him to wtite this tale.
He has, in any case, competely captured what life was like in Claremont and the surrounding suburbs at that time. The language, the behaviour, the sense of time and place – and character – is uncannily accurate.
It really made me reflect on how lucky I was to survive and get out – several of my friends didn’t manage either.
Reading Glenorchy Boy for me was like stumbling on lifelike a painting of myself – and it wasn’t a pretty picture.
For all that, I think anyone would enjoy (if that’s the right word), this compelling and highly readable novel – I suppose you’d call it a coming of age story in a certain time and place.
Recommended (unless you lived it, in which case, have a stiff drink handy).