The Shadow Girl

John Larkin (author)

Woolshed Press, Random House, Australia: October 2011:406pp

ISBN: 978186471875

Genres: adventure, realistic fiction

Issues: abuse, crime, homelessness

Nobody plans a life on the streets, especially not the girl in the shadows. Okay, her parents don't get on and her father tends to use his fists instead of his head but she loves school and wants to become a doctor and work for Medicines Sans Frontieres. Not something you can do without an address. Or can you?

Larkin is an experienced writer of humorous novels for young adults and has a great capacity to get readers empathising with his protagonists. In The Shadow Girl the reader is shown a determined, feisty, intelligent girl who uses her brain to survive. Unfortunately there are some gaping holes in the narrative logic that make suspension of disbelief a challenge. The Shadow Girl is an absorbing, exciting, at times bleakly funny novel written in expressive prose but there is a certain Matthew Riley-esque action fantasy edge to it that means it will transfer well to film but lacks the authenticity of say, No and Me. There is a constant contradiction between the girl's naive choices and her near escapes on the harsh reality of the streets. Larkin's skill as a writer means that he mostly manages to explain such unlikely occurrences as the girl finding an empty house to live in. An empty house in an 'ivy covered' (low crime, wealthy) area, what's more. An empty house which, despite being unoccupied for years, still has running water and working electricity.

The homeless girl's survival against the odds depends on the support of a former teacher who doesn't report her (as she's legally required to do) but offers her food, shelter at need and a mobile phone (bill paid by the teacher) on the condition that she maintains attendance at the school she lies her way into, keeps up her A-grades and phones in every day. It's not that being homeless and continuing schooling is an impossible achievement – it's a laudable one. It's just that in this story that achievement is dependent on a number of highly unlikely events which include the theft of significant amount of cash from her the safe of her sleazy and dangerous uncle, falling under the protection of drug-addicted, bulimic 'fairy godmother' who never tries to rob or take advantage of her, and nobody noticing that she's making illicit use of a credit card she stole from her aunt. A credit card she uses to pay for 'holidays' (a week at a time) in a 5-star hotel.

If you're willing to park your disbelief at the door at times, The Shadow Girl is a very readable novel that explores loss of innocence and the tragedy of a society in which children are made vulnerable if the adults around them are sufficiently convincing – or feared. The narrative voice segues almost imperceptibly (and sometimes confusingly) between interview transcripts, dreams, memories, third-person narrative and escapist fantasies that the shadow girl uses to survive the horrors of homelessness.

An interesting read, The Shadow Girl will no doubt draw the attention of the CBCA for its strong characters and thought-provoking themes but it lacks the authentic resonance of, say, Helicopter Man or Dust.

Inspired by a chance meeting at an author talk, when Larkin met a homeless girl who was putting herself through high school, The Shadow Girl is a discussion-starter and draws attention to an increasing problem in our society – children who are losing their futures to homelessness and a society that is losing its future to a problem we're not trying hard enough to solve.

'Of course you can use fate as an excuse for not getting out of bed in the morning. For doing nothing with your life. Or you take the opposite tack. There is no fate... [Miss Taylor] wears a cross around her neck and her favourite book is the Bible but she believes that we make our own destiny without God's approval...she hints that although we haven't had the best start in life, that doesn't prevent us from changing our destiny, because there isn't one. We start each day with a blank sheet of paper in front of us, and what we write is up to us.' (p251)

Warning: graphic violence, sex scenes (including male masturbation) and descriptions of rape