Richard Beasley - Me and Rory MacBeath

It seems fitting, somehow, that I will have read more Australian novels this year than in any previous year. It is, after all, the year I am departing Australia. Call it a farewell salute. This one, by Richard Beasley, is set in 1970s Adelaide. The last book I read by Richard Beasley was Hell Has Harbour Views, and whilst I enjoyed both that and Me and Rory MacBeath immensely, they could not be more different. Hell Has Harbour Views is a cynical, satirical look at big city law firms and the nasty practices and people that are to be found therein. Me and Rory MacBeath is a hugely moving coming-of-age story about a boy who lives in the wealthy suburbs of Adelaide with his barrister mother, Harry, and whose friendship with a boy called Rory changes him forever. In my opinion, it is the better book, and marks Beasley as an Australian writer for our times, one who will be remembered.

Jake is a sweet twelve year old boy whose life thus far has been reasonably sheltered and defined by his privileged suburban neighbourhood - running through sprinklers, playing backyard cricket with his best mate Robbie who lives just a few houses away. He lives with his mum, Harry, who is single and who teaches Jake to argue persuasively and to use words, not fists, when he's angry. Jake and Robbie know everyone in their neighbourhood, from Mr Nixon, who strictly guards his wife's precious garden against encroachment by footballs, cricket balls and the like, to the Williams, whose daughter is Jake's young crush. Jake's biggest worries are the balls he loses over the Nixons' fence and the embarrassment caused by his having once seen Mrs Williams ironing without a top on. That is until Rory moves in to the neighbourhood.

All of a sudden backyard cricket takes on a new dimension - it is England against Australia against Scotland, which everyone knows doesn't work, three being a crowd in backyard or front-yard cricket. At first Jake doesn't understand what Rory is good for, but when he sees Rory string a fishing line, gut a fish, and fight a bully he suddenly realises there is room in his life after all for one more friend. Before long Rory, Robbie and Jake are inseparable and life seems to be one long summer. Robbie's dad takes them away on fishing trips, they camp overnight in Robbie's backyard, they listen to Harry's lawyer mates getting drunk during parties at Jake's house.

But it is a formative period in their lives and before long they are exposed to things that have them growing up quickly. Jake is sent to a new school, and slowly sees less of both Robbie and Rory, and when Rory's life undergoes a shocking change Jake finds himself having to navigate through the murky waters of adult morality to decide where his own values lie.

Beasley writes beautifully here, capturing the essence of boyish youth perfectly. Much of the humour in the book arises from Jake's quoting of his mother's sardonic quips, not understanding that they were meant in jest - it comes across as entirely real and believable. I found myself particularly drawn to the characters of Jake and Harry, who is brilliantly portrayed as a chain-smoking, wine-swilling single mum who is a force against evil in the courtroom, and who "smokes her cigarettes differently after court than the way she did before court".

The courtroom drama which occupies a third of the book is fascinating and richly illustrated, and the story as a whole is true to the time in which it is set. A judge who is faced by a woman driven to extreme action after years of violent abuse at the hands of her husband comments that "her marriage was an unfortunate one", capturing at once the stilted language of a judicial figure and the rampant chauvinism of the 1970s.

Jake's endless summer comes to an end in a touching and believable way when he realises his life will never be the same as it once was, and that whilst he wasn't yet a man, he "didn't feel like a boy either." I was moved by this story and am pleased to have found an Australian novel which reflects and immortalises a particular kind of suburban upbringing, one to which I can relate.

Overall assessment: 4.5 out of 5.

Favourite passages: Beasley's use of language is highly evocative for much of the novel, such as when he describes a boy at Jake's school as one with "small footprints, their impact slight, almost nothing, amid a school where other boys stomped around." He gets the tone of a boy on the brink of adulthood just right, infusing Jake's narration with a kind of innocent wisdom that is highly endearing. For example, describing his mother in action in the coutroom, Jake says:

"Harry put her hand on her head then and straightened her wig. It was one of the things she did a lot. Whenever she finished a point, an important one, she often adjusted her wig. But in reality, she unstraightened it. She seemed to like it to be ever so slightly on an angle, not quite comically so, but just enough to give the impression, if you did make assumptions, that she thought wearing a barrister's wig was just a bit funny, or odd. It was like a wink to the jury."

This one is really worth a read.