Age of dreams and nightmares: Review of 'Boys of Summer' Peter Skrzynecki, Brandl & Schlesinger, 224pp, $26.95

Abstract

A story of two boys recalls suburban life and religious scandal in the 1950s. Peter Skrzynecki has been shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards three times. He has won the Grace Leven Poetry Prize. His collection of poems, Immigrant Chronicle, is on the HSC syllabus. He's an experienced and talented writer. Any new work of his comes with high expectations. This book, unfortunately, fails to meet them. That does not make it a bad book. In the best passages, mostly in the final pages, Skrzynecki's ability to mesmerise with words overcomes the book's problems of structure and narrative voice. However, those problems are substantial. It is as if the book were not quite finished. For at least the first half, I was unsure whether the reader was meant to be seeing through the eyes of the 11-year-old son of Polish immigrants, Tom Krupa, or his adult version. The book commences with a recollection of a dream from his "boyhood", so the adult perspective is established. However, this almost immediately dissipates and we are left with the language and tone of the child's vision with no adult awareness. This does emerge later in the book and redeems the narrative but for several chapters the pace is slow and laborious. There is also an awkwardness in setting up time and place. This is partly because of the excessive detail, which does not serve to set the scene so much as read as history. For example, "Television came to Australia in 1956" and "he memorised the stations from one end of the band to the other: 2SM, 2CH, 2UW" and so on. At one point, a full number-plate is listed as if it were a clue, yet it serves no narrative function. This would not necessarily matter if the third person narrative voice were consistent and clear but early in the book it shifts uneasily from the child to the adult perspective without apparent purpose. Nevertheless, even with these problems, this tale of Tom and his friends and their coming of age in the outer western suburbs of Sydney in the '50s is charming when the children are involved. Skrzynecki evokes the relative simplicity of '50s outer suburban life in a languid style with no surprises. That Father John is a paedophile is signalled well in advance, so there are certain expectations established. As a priest, he can win the trust of parents despite his whisky breath and smoky pipe.