Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clearsighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide ‘physical, intellectual and moral training’ which will equip its inmates to become ‘honorable and honest men’.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear ‘out back’. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King’s ringing assertion, ‘Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.’ But Elwood’s fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood’s idealism and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is an extraordinary literary novel based on a real reform school in Florida during the Jim-Crow-era that operated for 111 years and destroyed the lives of thousands of children.

In the acknowledgements page, Colson Whitehead talks about the inspiration for this book — the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Archaeology students at the University of South Florida dug up an area surrounding the school and uncovered a secret graveyard. The students worked to identify the remains of countless students who had been tortured, raped, mutilated, and then buried beneath the ground.

In The Nickel Boys, the institution is called Nickel Academy, with two segregated establishments — one campus is for coloured boys, and the other is for white boys.

Protagonist Elwood Curtis was abandoned by his mother and left in the care of his loving, compassionate grandmother Harriet. He’s now in high school. He’s driven, intelligent, and he has his eyes set on graduating from the local community college. But one mistake — hitchhiking — lands him in Nickel Academy. The driver, Rodney, has stolen the car they’re riding in, and Elwood is considered guilty.

“There were three of them. The biggest one he’d seen last night, the boy who looked too old to attend Nickel. The giant was named Griff; in addition to his mature appearance, he was broad-chested and hunched like a big brown bear. Griff’s daddy, it was said, was on a chain gang in Alabama for murdering his mother, making his meanness a handed-down thing.”

Set in 1960s Florida, the book highlights segregation and the racism that was rife during that time. A black person could be arrested for not giving way to a white person on the sidewalk. Black people did things for free, and white people benefited.

Nickel Academy is technically not a prison, and boys usually don’t stay longer than 1-2 years in the place, but it is a nightmare, hellish place to live. When boys misbehave, they’re plucked from their beds in the middle of the night and taken to a former work shed called the White House.

Here, boys are strapped into a three-foot-long contraption called Black Beauty, and beaten. They’re whipped, stretched, and abused. The boys’ screams can be heard by everyone in Nickel Academy. Additionally, ‘out back’ is where the cruel and vicious staff take the boys who they plan to murder and bury beneath the ground.

“He spent another five days in the hospital, then it was back with the other Nickel boys. School and work. He was one of them now in many ways, including his embrace of silence. When his grandmother came to visit, he couldn’t tell her what he saw when Dr. Cooke removed the dressings and he walked the cold tile to bathroom.”

Whitehead is skilled at moving back and forth in time, seamlessly. We learn more about Elwood and his family as we progress through the novel. There are snippets here and there of his former life, his mother and father’s lives, and his childhood with his grandmother.

The prose is very elegant, lean and pared back — it’s a short book at 200 pages, and quick to read. The plot is riveting, drawing you in and refusing to let you go. I adore both Elwood and his best friend Turner, who are so different but find each other within the horrors of Nickel Academy.

Reading The Nickel Boys has encouraged me to purchase The Underground Railroad, which I had not gotten around to reading yet.

The Nickel Boys is one of my favourite reads of the year. As hard as the subject matter is to read at times, the writing is fantastic and eloquent, the characters larger-than-life. Highly recommended.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
July 2019
Hachette Book Publishers

My father trained me to silence the way he trained his dogs, with food and a cane. Speech, he said, was poison. It scared the game, alerted the gamekeepers and betrayed your friends and family.

Tom Clay was a poacher back in Suffolk. He was twelve when he was caught, tried and transported to New South Wales.

Now, assigned to a shepherds’ hut out west, he is a boy among violent men. He keeps his counsel and watches over his sheep; he steers clear of blowhards like the new man, Rowdy Cavanagh. He is alert to danger, knowing he is a foreigner here: that the land resists his understanding.
The question is: how fast can he learn?

Because a vicious killer named Dan Carver is coming for Tom and Rowdy. And if Tom can’t outwit Carver in the bush – and convince Rowdy to keep his stupid mouth shut – their deaths will be swift and cruel.

Shepherd by Catherine Jinks is set in 1840 New South Wales, after the British colony convict 14-year-old Tom Clay of poaching and sentence him to work in Australia as a shepherd. The environment is brutal and violent, and Tom quickly learns how cruel and dangerous the other convicts can be.

Tom and Joe work at a shepherd’s hut west of Sydney — their role is to protect the master’s sheep from wild dogs. They have loyal dogs of their own to help with the task, called Gyp and Pedlar. Both men have come from England after being convicted of crimes. They’re also terrified of Dan Carver, who was working with them until recently. Prior to the events of the book, Tom and Joe had realised that Dan was a psychopathic murderer, and he was planning to kill the two of them. In self defence, they attacked him and left him to die in the wilderness.

But, Dan Carver isn’t dead, and he returns to the farm to seek vengeance on Tom, Joe, their new Irish shepherd Rowdy Cavanagh, and their beloved dogs. The group must fight for their lives to escape the vicious Dan Carver.

“My dreams are never good. In my poaching dreams, I’m always caught. In my dreams about Ma, she’s always on her deathbed. My father always beats me and my trial always ends on a hangman’s rope. Sometimes I dream that the ship bringing me to New South Wales founders and sinks. Sometimes I dream that I’m being flogged.”

Shepherd is about life in the Australian colonies — the dangers, the challenges, and difficulties of navigating the harsh Australian bush. Additionally, the book highlights the racism that these convicts exacted on Indigenous Australians.

The pacing of the novel is one of the biggest strengths, and in fact, the book takes place over only a few short days. We’re moving through the bush with Tom and Rowdy as they first try and evade Dan, and then decide to turn the tables and start formulating a plan to kill Dan.

Tom Clay has had a difficult childhood and upbringing, and doesn’t trust other people easily. He has huge affection for his dogs, and cares for them more than he cares for people. But, over the course of the novel, Tom and Rowdy bond and look out for each other. They even begin to trust in one another.

“Rowdy is so busy talking that he’s blind to where he is. This is a well-used path, heading straight for water, but he doesn’t comment on the musky smells, the droppings, the tracks, the feathers, the footprints, the marked tree trunks. When birds call and flit, he doesn’t pause to watch them in case they’re warning us of something bigger.”

At times, the nature of the plot got a bit tiresome. It’s a fast-paced pursuit in an unforgivable environment, and while this would look fantastic on a film screen, reading it in a book can get a little exhausting. It’s 200 pages of Tom Clay and Dan Carver up against each other, chasing and trapping and tricking and fighting. After a while, I felt like I was losing momentum in the story.

In saying that, I thought this novel was fantastic. The writing style is very lean — pared back. I didn’t feel like there was any overwriting, or excessive word choice. Catherine only wrote what was necessary for the story, and I was completely enthralled by the book. The dialogue is fabulous, the setting and atmosphere captured incredibly well, and the story really inviting for readers.

Recommended for adult readers who are interested in a short read set in the Australian wilderness of the 19th century. Readers must be interested in the Australian colonial setting to warm to this book, I suspect.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Shepherd
Catherine Jinks
July 2019
Text Publishing

Sydney, 1942

Recently orphaned, Angel Martin moves into ab oarding house populated by an assortment of eccentric and colourful characters. She’s befriended by the gregarious Winifred Varnham – a vision in exotic fabrics – and the numerically gifted Barnaby Grange. But not everyone is kind and her scrimping landlady, Missus Potts, is only the beginning of Angel’s troubles.

Angel refuses to accept her fate and focusses her affections on her two maiden aunts. Despite their resistance, she is determined to forge a sense of belonging. Her visits to the aunts’ house on the Bay soon expand her world in ways she couldn’t have imagined.

Elizabeth Stead brings her classic subversive wit and personal insight to this nostalgic portrait of wartime Sydney. In Angel Martin, she has created a singular and irrepressible character. A true original.

Literary fiction novel The Aunt’s House is a quirky, charming tale of family, legacy and identity. Sydney author Elizabeth Stead brings warmth and wit to the novel, and a three-dimensional protagonist who readers have no choice but to adore.

The novel is set in 1942, and eleven-year-old Angel Martin is an orphan and the newest addition to a boarding house run by Missus Potts. Her father died many years earlier, and her mother has just passed away whilst living in a sanatorium. Angel is unwanted by her paternal aunts because they believe her mother was responsible for their brother’s death years earlier.

The novel was a bit of a slow start for me, the direction of the story a little unclear and my faith in the story wavering. But, over time, I grew to love little Angel and her resilient personality. The book is written from Angel’s perspective, but in third person, and so we learn to love her voice. It’s a bit stream of conscious, but also really hopeful and glass-half-full. She’s quite a quirky, strange girl and so her narration reflects that throughout the book.

There are moments of humour peppered throughout the story, amidst moments of darkness. A few of the men in the boarding house either try, or succeed, to sexually abuse Angel. She doesn’t seem to dwell on the assault much and pushes it out of her mind, and perhaps this is her method of avoiding and ignoring what happened so that she doesn’t have to confront the events.

“Angel liked to think B and K truly loved each other — she wanted them to love each other and she wanted them to be married and have lots of babies. But perhaps the whole thing might have been just a dream and nothing happened at all. It might just have been hearts on fire at first sight between stops.”

Mental illness is a strong theme throughout the book. Angel’s mother was living in a sanatorium when she died, and a lot of people in Angel’s life think she’s inherited her mother’s mental instability. Angel does what she wants, when she wants, and people find her tough and hard to manage.

Another strong theme is family and companionship. Angel forms friendships with numerous people in town and their bonds strengthen over the course of the novel. In the boarding house, she strikes up a friendship with the insightful Barnaby Grange, and the interesting and eccentric Winifred Warnham. She also regularly takes the tram to see her Aunts, who do not want her in their home. But Angel is determined and loveable, and soon, a connection is formed.

“She tried to remember what her father looked like before the accident but her remembrance was more a smell. Not a tram smell. Sunday was a tram smell, the electric smell of wood and rails and hot cables. No, the smell of her father she remembered was motorcycle racing fuel and the sight of it in leaked black patches on the backyard grass.”

The Aunt’s House is about the complexities of humans, and the importance of not passing judgment onto others. The characters in the book are all very unique, but they’re a clever and fun bunch of characters and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about them all.

I’d recommend this to readers of adult fiction and lovers of literary works. This is incredibly character-driven, and so perfect for fans of complex and dimensional fiction.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Aunts’ House
Elizabeth Stead
April 2019
UQP Publishers

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatised by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog’s care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

In The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, the unnamed female narrator inherits a Great Dane named Apollo after her friend, fellow writer, and former mentor commits suicide. She lives in a 500-square-foot Manhattan apartment, is not allowed to own a dog in the apartment, and it also a self-confessed cat person.

The book is written in second person, directed at the friend who committed suicide, and is the perfect example of when an author executes second person really well in literature.

“Mostly he ignores me. He might as well live here alone. He makes eye contact at times, but instantly looks away again. His large hazel eyes are strikingly human; they remind me of yours… Having your dog is like having a part of you here.”

Suicide is mentioned sporadically, in tune with a human’s tendency to think through issues at different times of the day and in spurts. The narrator will wonder about her friend’s death, and his decision, for a moment or two, and then her thought process will switch to something else. Sigrid has captioned the human experience very well, particularly through the narrator’s internal dialogue.

The tone of the book is mournful, soulful, and rich with remembrance. The narrator is trying to come to terms with her friend’s death, and at times, the reasons behind it. The book shows great friendship between the narrator and her mentor. The two had a long history together, at one point they were intimate but mostly it was just a long-lasting and strong friendship.

At first, Apollo is a burden to the narrator. She takes him reluctantly. The dog is going to cause the narrator to get evicted from her apartment and whenever she leaves the dog for too long, she comes back to find him anxious and depressed. But over time, and particularly in the final third of the book, their friendship and understanding develops and she sees Apollo as a companion.

The fact that Apollo is the only character in the book who is named shows great significance.

“When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have to die and how much longer will it be before you lose the roof over your head, having a huge warm body pressed along the length of your spine is an amazing comfort.”

The book is as much about Apollo as it is about writers and writing, since the unnamed narrator is a writer and a writing tutor. She is often disappointed in what her students produce, and addresses her friend when she talks about the quality of the work she’s reading.

At times, the book feels like a blend between fiction and memoir, since Sigrid Nunez is a very accomplished author who may have once grappled with questions surrounding the nature writing that our unnamed narrator does.

The narrator’s friend was a writer and a writing professor, and he was far from perfect. You learn about his multiple marriages and his womanising. He was charming, but he was also a sexist man. He often slept with his female students, of which our narrator was one. His ex-wives, and the narrator’s interactions with them, all give the reader insight into what the character was like and how he affected those around him.

Our narrator doesn’t forget these things. She knows he was flawed, and he made mistakes. But she was also his friend and she loved him. She doesn’t make excuses for him, and quite a few times throughout the book she expresses her anger at him for what he was like when he was alive.

“I am left thinking about the mastiffs. Besides their great bulk and a mane that makes them look part lion, they are known for being fiercely protective and loyal to their masters. So what does a doh bred for those traits feel when its master lets it be herded onto one of those transport trucks? Does a dog understand betrayal?”

The book explores despair, but also understanding and hope. The character doesn’t understand — and didn’t foresee — her friend committing suicide and must learn to accept that she can’t change what happened.

Recommended for literary fiction lovers. Despite being well-written, the book does read a little dry at times and I feel this is a book best discovered by seasoned readers. There isn’t much plot in the book, so it’s really read for the narrative voice and the writing and the relationship between the narrator and her dead friend, and now her relationship with his dog.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Friend
Sigrid Nunez
January 2019
Hachette Book Publishers