The December Boys

If I’d realised this book was by Michael Noonan, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with it – I’ve read some of his other books. They all feature that fairly stilted voice, with stereotypical, unrealistic characters and basically unexciting events happening in a row. His stories read like a writing-class exercise.

This isn’t much different. A group of boys from a Home are on holidays at a beach, where they meet an assortment of odd characters (stereotypical Irish, for example) and have to deal with growing up and changing. Yes, it’s a Coming Of Age story. In fact, this is the sort of book where a great deal could be capitalised, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s being studied at school. As it was published in the sixties, I feel thankful that I was spared it. On the other hand, I suppose being fed a diet of second-rate, boring books at school makes you really thankful about all the good books you discover yourself (Hemingway, Conrad, Steinbeck, etc).

It is only being republished now because they’ve made a movie of it. It’s probably going to be a good movie; I can see that you could take elements of it and weave an interesting and pretty picture out of it – being set by the sea, after all. They’ve managed to link the book to Harry Potter in this way (the same actor appears in both films) and will get some sales that way. Still, there’s far better books out there that they could be republishing – everything by Eleanor Spence, for example.