In an interview I did with Phillip Gwynne in 2000 on the publication of the sequel to Deadly, Unna?, Nukkin’ Ya, we talked about the distinctive voice of Blacky, the narrator of both books. Gwynne made two observations:
To tell the truth I could probably keep writing in that voice until the cows came home.
and
I’m writing an adult’s book at the moment and I made a very deliberate decision to write in third person — I don’t want Blacky trying to sneak in while I’ve got my guard down.

I don’t know what happened to that adult novel, but Gwynne has written a new YA novel, Jetty Rats. Told in the first person, Jetty Rats is the story of a teenage boy with a smart mouth and a smarter vocabulary, who lives in a small coastal town, is devoted to his mum and his chosen sport, who has a burning desire to get out of said small coastal town and who has an older bloke (or two) who act as sort of surrogate father figures… sound familiar? But in fact, the similarities between Jetty Rats and Deadly, Unna? are superficial and Hunter Vettori is no pale imitation of Blacky. Instead, in Jetty Rats Gwynne has crafted an original and a wise and witty fable of grief and growing up, of friendship, family — and fishing.

What struck me most about Jetty Rats was that Gwynne has avoided the trap he alluded to in the interview — that of falling back into the comfortable shoe that is Blacky’s voice. It seems to me to be a fairly remarkable achievement, to create two teenage male characters with so much in common, including their love of language (made overt by Blacky’s passion for the Reader’s Digest Improve Your Word Power; Hunter simply has a sophisticated vocabulary, including a passing knowledge of Latin, without explication of why or how), yet with two entirely distinct voices. I think the essence of the difference in the voices (and I’m no linguist, as Hunter himself erroneously states at one point, but in my case it’s true) is in the essential difference between the characters and, indeed, the books.

Despite his father’s disappearance while rock fishing five years earlier (an event Hunter has yet to come to terms with) and the additional responsibilities at the caravan park that Hunter’s mum Sandy manages that have fallen on Hunter’s shoulders since, Hunter is basically a sunny chap. Sure, he’d like to get out of Dogleg Bay and away from the daily clean-out of the caravan park’s MAB (Men’s Amenity Block and its regular “floaters” — ew!) and he has Gleitzman-like naïve expectations that he’ll catch a monster mullaway one day, become stinking rich and replace Rex Hunt on the TV, but really, nothing much fazes Hunter. Not old Zappo down the jetty, an old fisher bloke who happens to like wearing frocks. Not even his mum’s hippy mate Saphonia and her impressive bazookas (Hunter has a healthy 13-year-old’s regard for breasts, even while vaguely embarrassed by them), although he likes to kid himself that Saphonia and her twin daughters, the Photocopies, are the bane of his existence. But in truth, the only shadow in Hunter’s life is his dad’s disappearance, and the sorrow it continues to cause him and Sandy and his dad’s best mate Drilla. And it’s no small thing, that sorrow, but it’s close to home and personal, not the huge darkness revealed after Dumby Red’s death in Deadly, Unna?. For although Gwynne has expressed his suspicion of causes and ideologies, Deadly, Unna? and Nukkin’ Ya are political in a way that Jetty Rats isn’t — and this is merely an observation of the differences in tone and voice in the books, not a criticism of either.

I became increasingly fond of Hunter as the book progressed, and then again on subsequent readings. He’s a very smart kid — intelligent smart, not smart-arse, although he can be that too — determined and focused, even disciplined. Most of this determination is to do with catching his mulloway, which leads him into some criminal activity that he doesn’t get caught for, much less punished — although he does learn a subtly expressed lesson from it. (I can imagine the book receiving criticism for this unpunished act, but let’s remember — it’s a novel, not a tract on responsible bevahiour.) He’s in some ways wise and disciplined beyond his years — he takes on an extra paid job he hates in order to save up for a reel for a new fishing rod he’s been given — but he’s also convincingly naïve and immature when it comes to his father’s disappearance and that damn fish. But he’s also right, at least about one of them, even as he’s totally and utterly wrong about Jasmine and Storm, the Photocopies, as only a 13 year old boy can be wrong about 13 year old girls…

Although told by Hunter in first person, there’s a very likeable ensemble feel to Jetty Rats. All the secondary characters are extremely well drawn — this is true of Gwynne’s earlier novels too, now I come to think of it. Sandy’s desire to get a tattoo as a link to her lost husband is both touching and funny. Drilla’s grief and guilt over being too hung over to go fishing with his mate the day he disappeared is subtly realised, and nicely set against some very funny scenes with his fiancé De-anne (think Sophie Lee’s character in Muriel’s Wedding, only nice). Even bit players are deftly sketched in a sentence or two; here’s Dogleg Bay’s publican on the day Hunter’s dad disappeared:

“Best business I done in years,” said Vera from the pub. “Them search-and-rescue folk sure get a thirst up.”

There are many more wonderful secondary characters than are mentioned here — Gwynne is particularly effective in using them to build a very real picture of small town life, and he writes all of them, even the bastards and the maddies, with great affection.

Gwynne has a wonderful way with dialogue and a real feel for Australian English that might not get him as many overseas sales as he deserves, but he really does capture a way of seeing the world and expressing it through language that is specifically anglo-Australian — and it’s good to see that genuinely done, and done with intelligence and wit. We have a very diverse literature for children and young people in this country — look at the number of YA books exploring identity through cultural heritage, such as Looking for Alibrandi and Sparring with Shadows that have been published in the last dozen or so years, for instance. In fact, it’s possibly not overstating it to suggest that the “traditional” anglo-Australian voice isn’t heard all that often in books for young people any more (when was the last time you read the phrase “Khyber Pass” in a YA novel?!), and it’s a great hallmark of Gwynne’s work to date.

There’s a touch of the fantastic about Jetty Rats too, in a similar (although also very different) way that there’s a touch of the fantastic in Odo Hirsch’s Hazel Green novels (or perhaps a movie like Cinema Paradiso). There’s no fantasy or magic, we’re strictly on terra firma (australis), but the novel’s dénouement definitely has a feel of the extraordinary about it. I won’t spoil it, but it’s to do with a wedding, the mullaway and Hunter coming to terms with the fact that his dad’s not coming back. It’s an exhilarating conclusion to a wonderful engaging novel that meanders around a loosely organised plot in much the same way that kids meander around their small coastal towns during the summer holidays. Jetty Rats is a total pleasure from the first page to the last, from the MAB to — well, to the jetty!

©Judith Ridge 2004