The Never Boys

Scott Monk (author)

Random House, Australia: 2005; 312pp

ISBN: 1741660068

Genres: adventure, realistic fiction

Issues: community, friendship, identity,responsibility, values

Sixteen-year-old Dean Mason is looking for work - anything that will pay his bus fare to Sydney. He arrives on a large sheep station in the Barossa Valley on a day when an arsonist has started a fire and as a consequence no one is the least bit interested in him.

Persistent more from dire necessity rather than genuine interest, Dean convinces ‘the General', a tough woman who owns one of the largest properties in the district, to take him on as a rouseabout. Although appalled at the rough, dirty work he is required to do, Dean realises that the money is too good to pass up and, for now, it seems he can blend into the community and escape his past.

Besides, ‘the General' has a wild daughter, Zara, and Dean finds her beauty and lawlessness terribly attractive. The locals give him a hard time at first, but he's soon an accepted part of the landscape. Boarding in the deserted shearer's quarters, it only takes the discovery of a classical guitar amongst the belongings of Clive, a man who has recently died, and Dean decides that maybe it is safe to stay for a while. Maybe he can use his music to attract the gorgeous Zara, and earn enough money so that he can stop running. All is well until someone recognises his face on a Wanted poster in the police station, when ‘Dean', as he's been calling himself, realises he has to make a decision. He can either go on the run - again - or he can face up to his past, and accept what's coming to him.

Monk's writing is fast-paced and has a terse, dramatic tone that will appeal to boys, especially. The narrative perspective is dominated by Dean's cloak-and-dagger attitude to the world around him, a tone that becomes rather irritating at times as the language is full of the smart comebacks and teenage angst that are part of that character. Unfortunately the other characters are somewhat two-dimensional, perhaps because of an over-reliance on the use of dialogue rather than narration to convey their personalities.

It is indicative of Monk's talent as a writer that, despite these flaws, the novel is still quite readable, the narrative line basically strong, with some unexpected features that allow it to avoid becoming a completely stereotypical ‘teenage rebel against the world' type story. Dean's fascination with Clive's life story and the ‘war letters' he discovers is one example, although the letters themselves contain far more information than the censors would ever have allowed to get through the lines. Narratively, they are designed to serve as a vehicle to tell about a certain period of Australian history, and consequently do not truly reflect letters of the time.

Definitely a novel that will appeal to readers who have enjoyed John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began series.