Review

Breaking The Codes was published last August. The time that has subsequently elapsed makes it possible to comment not only on the book itself but also on some aspects of its reception.

Tom and Audrey McDonald have shared a life of commitment together, promoting what they consider to be the political, social and economic interest of the Australian working class.

With Gift of the Gab, Gleitzman continues the saga of Rowena Batts, the feisty twelve-year-old who previously appeared in Blabber Mouth (1992) and Sticky Beak (1993). Ro is the daughter of an apple farmer, a child with character, immense energy, and several problems: chiefly her inability to speak (she was born with 'some bits missing' from her throat) and her loving and much loved Dad. She copes with her vocal handicap through fluent sign language and a notebook at the ready, but Dad – an ardent country-and­western enthusiast, given to cowboy boots, loud satin shirts and a penchant for off-key renderings of his favourite ballads at every opportunity – is harder to handle.

The publication of this book has created somewhat of a storm in a teacup. Melbourne  researcher, Maja Sainisch-Plimer, demanded its recall, claiming the book misrepresented the findings of her research over the twenty years. The publisher, Graeme Ryan, placed a Notice to Bookshops in the book pages of The Age claiming unfair practice and advising bookshops ‘to confidently display and sell Anya: Countess of Adelaide’. Subsequently the book has been reclassified by the National Library from biography to fiction.

The devil, as we know, quotes scripture for his own ends, and there was something devilishly confronting about Andrew Masterson’s first novel, The Last Days: the Apocryphon of Joe Panther (1998). It kept you on your toes, ducking and weaving with the punches of its arguments, its cleverly orchestrated quotes from the New Testament and the early church, its tossed off histories and heresies, its ultimate ‘what if ... ?’

The good old days (bad old days?) of young adult fiction are gone. A couple of decades back it was impossible to imagine a reputable mainstream publisher producing a book for older children which has been supported by the Literature Board of the Australia Council and whose plot revolves around drug-taking (casual and accepted), violence, murder, abduction and rape. This is what The Enemy You Killed is about. The question is, does it more accurately depict real life than, say, an old-fashioned genteel novel like Swallows and Amazons? Perhaps it depends where you live. I’m not convinced that teenage gunplay with live ammunition is necessarily more ‘real’ than messing about with boats. At least in Australia. There is more than a whiff of the tabloids around the melodrama of The Enemy You Killed. It tells of a fifteen­year-old girl, Jules (Julia), who lives in an unspecified country town which lies close to a state forest dissected by a steep gorge. In this forest, mostly at weekends, many of the local young people have for many years been playing wargames dressed in combat gear and using not only air rifles and home-made explosives, but sometimes real combat weapons. The Tunnel Rats stalk The Rebels and vice versa, and a successful ambush is the ultimate thrill.

The central contention of this provocative, well-written, and extensively researched study is that Australia underwent a process of decolonisation during the 1940s, and that only by understanding this can we make sense of the subsequent relationships between Australia, Britain and the United States.

The first virtue of this study is to remind us of the dramatic, potentially cataclysmic, quality of the mid-nineteenth century gold rushes to California in the late 1840s and to south-east Australia soon afterwards. That was prime among the several characteristics the two experiences had in common. At few other points is there so close affinity in the histories of Australia and the USA. The subject is altogether appropriate for one, like David Goodman, who has engaged in research in both countries, and who teaches their comparative history. The result is a most satisfying monograph. While the heavier incidence is on the Australian side, this is one of the few examples in the Australian repertoire of effective comparative work. One of few others in that list – Andrew Markus’s Fear and Hatred – also probes the goldfield, experience, describing how the British master-race treated the Chinese in either case. Goodman’ s aim is much more ambitious – to reveal basic socio-political responses to the cataclysm of gold.