My sister lives on the mantelpiece

Author: Annabel Pitcher

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Reading Age 10 – 14 years

This book had my attention from beginning to end. How does a small boy cope with a drunken, racist father, an absent mother, a teenage sister, moving to a country town and a new school and the constant presence of an urn on the mantelpiece? 

Narrated by ten-year-old Jamie this story tears at your heart strings yet makes you laugh at the same time. Though his understanding is limited, Jamie gets things right about what is important, while his parents have shut their living children from their grief-overwhelmed lives. 

At school he can’t write truthfully about his holidays or family, the parent /teacher interview is a disaster, to his class mates and teacher he is quite weird. His fifteen- year-old sister, who deals with the loss in her own ways, understands. Jas is there for Jamie while their father can’t let the other sister go. Their mother has gone off with the Support Worker sent to help the family cope with grief. If you think this sounds too sad to read, read it. You will want to protect Jamie and Jas who are totally neglected by those who should be protecting them, yet be delighted by the honesty and humour, the irony and the bitter-sweetness of help coming from the girl who bears classmates’ jibes of curry germ because of her origins.


Reviewed by Gayle Davidson

Odell Learning Resources Centre

Past the Shallows

Author: Favel Parrett

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Beyond the shallows, as we all know, you get into deep water. A family ekes out an existence diving for abalone in the south of Tasmania. Harry, the smallest boy of the family is protected… he has not been forced to go on the boat because of his sea-sickness, and his older brother Miles protects him from their sometimes violent father. The sea is everywhere, but it seems the land is not necessarily safer.

This first novel has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award this year, and it is a sad but familiar story. We slowly discover through emerging memories the events of the past that have shaped the unhappy present. There are many glimpses of the familiar for Australian readers: familiar show bags, familiar rural scenes, familiar guarded comments  from the adults who surround the family.

The narrator’s role is passed deftly but abruptly between three boys, so the twin narratives of history and the present are formed from fragments. As the book progresses these start to make a complete story but it is still up to the reader to assemble the whole. The author does an excellent job of conveying the different degrees of innocence and perspective of the two boys.

There is little graphical “adult” material apart from some swearing. The issues and themes, however, and tragedies that befall the characters, means this is more of an older teens or adult read.

Andrew Lack
Head of the Odell Learning Resources Centre

Wonderstruck

Author: Brian Selznick

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This is a “novel in words and pictures” even more so than the author’s celebrated The Invention of Hugo Cabret. By this I mean that the story is told by means of two threads. One, told mainly in words but with some haunting pictures (especially of dreams) is of young Ben Wilson. The other told entirely in pictures for the first two thirds of this hefty book is of a young girl in an earlier age. One of the joys of this complex literary device is the ability to hint at links between the two stories… and there is a delight in doing this while swapping medium (words to pictures and back). Initially the links are reflections or echoes, but gradually the two stories converge and as you might expect a moment comes when they become one story.

As with Hugo there is considerable drama surrounding the main protagonist, Ben. His mum has died, and though he is cared for by a kindly Aunt and Uncle, he is slowly starting to realise the depth and consequences of his loss. His nights are disturbed by terrifying dreams of wolves, and shows strange obsessions in wanting to collect tiny objects that are meaningless to others. All these disturbances crystallize when his one good ear is damaged and he decides to plunge into a search for someone or something he has lost.

I enjoyed reading Wonderstruck. It is, in appearance, a solid tome, but due to the heavy paper weight and many, many double spread illustrations the reading time is not that long. It is a satisfactory story with drama, tension and completion, but I enjoyed the medium and process a bit more than the actual story. There was a sense to me that the story telling was a bit disjointed in parts, and the ending perhaps too comfortable.

This would suit most ages though some of the images could be uncomfortable for young children, who would also struggle with some of the descriptive and explanatory print passages. There are important themes of dealing with grief, struggles with memory, friendship, family and disability. Just as Hugo celebrates the history of the theatre so Wonderstruck has a good deal about museums in it.

Andrew Lack
Head of the Odell Learning Resources Centre

The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

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I read a book about dying from cancer. I laughed all the way through. I then pondered long and hard as to where I would review this. 350Wordsorless is for books actually inthe Odell Learning Resources Centre library. As you can tell, I’m going to get this book but may display it in my office while I’m thinking through the harder questions. 

I simply wouldn’t bother scratching my head over a poorly written or insignificant book… but this is neither. The story is told by Hazel, a seventeen year old who does not go to college much, and has become fixated on a particular book (an invention of the author) called An Imperial Affliction. Hazel’s life has been somewhat constrained by having serious cancer, so serious that she is permanently on oxygen and, as far as she knows at the start of the book, facing only a limited time left on earth. 

Almost everything that follows is the opposite to the reader’s expectation. Hazel fits no simple stereotypical cancer victim persona. She is feisty, but refuses to be “brave”. Her parents are admirable and understanding, and while she finds them irritating at times she does not hate them. While many of the people you meet in the book also have cancer of various sorts, some very significant people in her life do not. Hazel is not exactly an ordinary teen, despite her “teenspeak” language, and shows a distinctly philosophical bent (in part influenced by the book she can’t stop reading and thinking about). 

Hazel questions much of the conventional “dance” of the cancer patient… doctor’s attitudes, support group platitudes, even her parents insistence that she “gets out more and makes friends”. She does, with unexpected consequences. 

This is not a self help book about coping with cancer. It is a book about friendship, romance and serious relationships, philosophy, death, grief, family and afterlife. While most of it is reasonably realistic, Hazel does encounter at least one larger than life character, but even he is essentially made up of super failings rather than super powers. 

I enjoyed this from cover to cover… so if you are reading this as a parent you will be wondering what could possibly cause me any concern (spoilers follow). Writing: very nicely done, swinging from “teen speak” to philosophy and back. Language: not too bad, mostly restrained. Violence: emotionally tough in parts but no physical violence. Sex: Hazel does go to bed with her boyfriend. It is handled discreetly but there is absolutely no doubt what does happen. Morality and overall hopefulness: this is a book that investigates death from cancer from the eyes of a teenager, and is consequently potentially harrowing for some. It does it (I believe) very well. Family allegiance is celebrated, as is faithfulness to friends and to those you are romantically involve with. Generosity, honesty and a kind of gritty positivity is pushed to the forward. Christianity: some of the Christians in the story are not shown as being especially helpful or responsive to Hazel’s real needs or ideas, on the other hand both sets of parents in the book seem to be church goers and this is not handled negatively. One of the characters believes in life after death (though not necessarily in a straightforward Christian context), another does not. 

So now you know… or at least enough to say “that’s the book for me” or “nah… not so much”. I hope adults do read this book… and I think it will have some positive things to say to teenagers who venture into its pages. Remember how I started? It’s a book about dying from cancer, and I laughed all the way through. 

Andrew Lack
Head of the Odell Learning Resources Centre

The Lake of Dreams

Author: Kim Edwards

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This is rich fare but tasty. We start in Japan (that had me in from page one) as we meet the narrator Lucy Jarrett. She is living there with her partner Yoshi. Gradually themes emerge from her narrative about the details of the day (peppered with earthquake shocks). It becomes clear we are going to be looking at the idea of family relationships, the role of the near and far past in impacting the present, ideas about domesticity and independence, food, fine art and beauty. The book seems initially to be a fairly light read, but partly due to a small font and partly due to the gorgeous descriptive passages it took me longer than expected. 

Lucy journeys back to her home town (by the Lake of Dreams). Nothing is as she remembers it: her mother is falling in love with someone she has met, her uncle seems bent on purchasing pristine lake frontage and commercially developing it, and a former boyfriend is now a much talked about glass blower in the “crafts” section of the town. We walk with Lucy through small events, interactions and discoveries, and gradually the pace and intensity picks up. She becomes intrigued by evidence she discovers of an unknown relative two generations prior, and this becomes the focus of one of the larger story arcs. 

The book is well crafted, with a pacing that ebbs and flows, but I was interested till the conclusion. There are moments of high drama with particular revelations, but it is less about the surprises than gradual uncovering of dimensions in her own past that end up feeding significantly into her present dilemmas. The process of story telling is therefore more like polishing an old vase until you can start to see your own reflection. 

It is unlikely to attract younger teens given the lyrical passages, multi-layered narrative and rich use of interlinked motifs: recommended for older teens and adults. There is certainly reference to adult themes and interactions but little to be uncomfortable about.

Andrew Lack
Head of the Odell Learning Resources Centre

The Man Who Loved Children

Author: Christina Stead

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(disclaimer: I simply can't do a 350 word review of this book!)

I heard this book discussed on the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club, and I was not surprised to hear it passionately defended by two guests, and savagely attacked by another. I bought this book for the school library because I believe it to be an outstanding (nearly) Australian novel. I suspect it will only be read by Extension English students, but I would encourage parents with a literary bent to borrow it. What is all the fuss about?

Those who do not like it find it intricately detailed and overwhelming in size… the larger format paperback I have is over 500 pages in length. It is also distressing because the story is a painfully close look at a family that we would now call dysfunctional. The cruelty to the children is not really physical, certainly not sexual… rather they are drafted into a world of warring parents who use endless tricks to co-opt the children to their side. This is all the more difficult because the parents each believe they are on high moral ground and do what they do for the sake of right and for the children… especially Sam, the father who loves his children so much that he cannot leave them alone for a moment to have their own thoughts or feelings.

I have long wondered why I loved this book from the first time I read it over 30 years ago. I think I know now… it is the extraordinary language that Sam (the father) uses with his family. This is not a trivial rendition by Christina Stead of a family’s “in house” language… not just the application of a few nick names or a special name for a mood or event. She actually creates a totally believable stream of language for Sam, who plays with words constantly, twists and distorts words, brings in without explanation scientific names, patches of Malay, literary references and phantasms of his own imagining. The effect of reading his monologues is like being immersed in a modern stream-of-consciousness text, or perhaps slabs of Finnegan’s Wake.

Stead does not speculate on the impact this strange life of inconsistent messages, cloying love and adult fury will have on the children. Ultimately she is telling the story of the eldest, Louise, who is very bright, constantly reading, and constantly called on by her parents to be a “little mother”. Her response is to shoulder responsibility beyond her age: defending the other children and challenging her parents. It is her story that ultimately reaches a tragic climax that brings the book to a close, without any hint of what will happen next.

There is just one clue… but it is not in the book, it is in the writer. There is a reasonable ground to believe that Stead drew on some aspects of her own childhood, and if that is true, then “Louise” went on to become a political activist and writer… and someone who lived most of her life away from her homeland.

Suitable for older students, the difficulty will be the size of the book and the characters who are appealing at times but enmeshed in tragedy none of them seem able to escape. The language is wonderful and worth close study.

Andrew Lack

Six Impossible Things

Author: Fiona Wood
Fourteen year old Dan feels like his whole world has ended. His Dad has lost all their money on a failed business… then abandoned Dan and his Mum, and announced he is gay. Their house has been repossessed, and they have been forced to go and live in an old smelly house provided by a relative. True, the girl next door catches Dan’s eye, and goes to his school, but seems aloof. Every effort he makes to attract her attention ends up a disaster.


Finally he makes a list of six impossible things he wants to achieve, such as getting a job and cheering up his Mum. The story is about what happens when he tries to achieve each of these goals. It is always a great sign when you are engaged as a reader within the first two pages. I was a little disappointed that the author decided on a series of happy endings. A book like Life on a Refrigerator Door touches similar themes of parent and child conflict and family tragedy, is largely positive, yet ends with the teen protagonist realising there are things she simply cannot fix. Despite that reservation, I thoroughly enjoyed Six Impossible Things. It is written with a wry sense of humour.


This is a book that could quite comfortably be given to students down to Year Five, though some of the issues canvased and the general reading level probably points to Year Seven and up. This is not a didactic book, and is not written “to help kids deal with divorce”… that is simply the setting for the opening scenes of disaster facing Dan. It is told in the first person in a diary format. It does espouse the value of tolerance and respect for individual choices.

Andrew Lack

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Fill Out This Application and Wait Over There

Author: Ruth Starke

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Thumbs up for a book that made me giggle while sending shivers of recognition up my spine. Nearby students appeared quite concerned when I evidenced that particular combination of symptoms. Ruth Starke’s “first novel for older readers” is a tongue in cheek harrowing tale of the trials faced by Hailee Moxie when she decides to look for work after leaving school. Hailee imagines this will be easy and casual work a breeze, but it turns out she has much to learn. She journeys into the arcane worlds of fashion sales, checkout chick and untrained “social column” editor for a local newspaper.


Hailee is an engaging character… I was willing her to success and was pleased that after the final page the author added a “what happens next” summary for each of the characters. Hailee tells her own story in diary form. This made me reflect on that most poignant of tales The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Age 13 ¾ . Part of the fun of reading a story like this is the dramatic irony. We know Haillee is going to make herself sick on the first day selling chocolates (staff can eat all they want) and we enjoy the sense of “I told you so” when it happens. For me, however, the life of Adrian Mole was very remote (suburban England in the 70s) while the world Hailee lives in is both very Australian and very up-to-date. She is no nerd, but has to keep helping her Dad with his battles with technology (“what’s an ISP thingy?”). The journalism intern who steals her job at the paper but is later fired promptly “defriends” everyone in the office on her Facebook page.


This is a book for teens and above. Bad language is relatively mild (a few bad words are included but “beeped” out with asterisks). There are a few references to other people’s sexual dalliances and drink or drug consumption, but she is a surprisingly innocent young lady and so the tone stays light and humorous. Ideal for Year Ten and up.


Andrew Lack