Let's check in on The Boy from the Mish

 

Now, The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough is a book that I can tell you exactly how I found out about it. I know a lot of the books I read, I just say that I found out about them, most often, from Twitter. But this one I found out about because one of my friends got me a gift card to this queer bookshop, and I ended up just going on the website of the shop, and browsing until I found something I could get with it. And that’s how I ended up with it.

Our blurb says that it’s a hot summer, and life’s going all right for seventeen-year-old Jackson and his family on the mish. It’s almost Christmas, school’s out, and he’s hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding racists in town. Just like every year, Jackon’s Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city – but this time Tomas, with his mysterious and troubled past, comes with them. As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret – a secret he thought he’d locked away for good.

With a vibe like that, I assumed that this was going to be some kind of coming-of-age story, and since I got this book from a queer bookshop, I assumed that Jackson’s secret was going to be something to do with his sexuality. I also assumed that with the two boys being on the front cover, that something was going to happen between Jackson and Tomas. Obviously, I didn’t know whether that meant for sure that the two were going to get together, but just that something was going to happen between them.

In the first chapter, Jackson is in the car with his friends, Jarny and Kalyn. They’re just sort of outside this pub, driving away from it, when they get pulled over in very much a case of racial profiling by the cops, because there was also a group of white guys around this pub, and the cops mysteriously went after the car of non-white folk. Hmm, whatever could reason be? But the besties are going to this house party, Jackson’s girlfriend, Tesha is there with her bestie, Abby. Jackson and Tesha end up going up to Abby’s room to hook up, but Jackson can’t do it. And when that flops and the two of them go outside, Jackson sees Jarny with his hand one a girl’s hip, and Jackson comments to the reader that he bet it feels nice, and, to me, the way it was worded kind of suggested that maybe he wanted to be the one whose hip was getting touched like that, or at least that was the vibe I picked up. Then by the end of the chapter, Tomas has turned up, and he’s sleeping on this spare mattress in Jackson, and Jackson very much thinks he looks cute. So, I after reading the first chapter, I did feel like my assumption as to what the secret Jackson had was correct. One of his cousins also mentioned that Tomas had just gotten out of jail, as well.

Ooh, but when all of his cousins all turn up? While I was reading it, I have never been so glad to have a small family, because through Jackson’s voice, he made it seem so exhausting, and I know that I definitely didn’t envy him. He mentions how he likes having his own room and bitch? Me too! It’s just that case of how nice it is to be able to have your own space where you can decompress and just shut yourself away for a while. And when that’s taken from you? Girl, mess. But to go back to the story, one of the kids gets bitten by a snake, and when he (Jackson) takes the child to the medical centre, he sees this gay kid from his school and one of Jackson’s friends makes, I’ll say, a homophobic comment, and by the end of the day, Jackson realises he’s kind of bothered by the comment this time – despite the fact he admits he’s said worse.

Before any proper conflict happens, you do see Jackson’s friends using homophobic slurs in the, “Ha ha, that’s so gay,” kind of way, so that kind of did do a little more to set up in what I assumed the conflict would end up being, that Jackson was going to be some level of queer, and he was going to have that struggle that there’s no one queer around him, and because of his friends, it’s going to be scary for him. And obviously, as a queer man, reading the homophobic comment made me not really appreciate Jackson’s friends. Also, one of Jackson’s friends, and I’d say this is a spoiler, but for a book that doesn’t have that much of a plot, what can you spoil? So, Jackson and Tesha break up – pretty early in the book – and one of Jackson’s friends ends up asking Jackson if he can ask Tesha out. Like, fair enough he asked Jackson, but mama… the clownery. His friend barely waited.

Jackson, and most of the characters (the ones on the Mish at least), are also Aboriginal Australians, which was something that I really appreciated, because, for one, I think I’ve only ever read one other book that was even set in Australia, but this is the first one I’ve read with this kind of representation of, you know, Aboriginal characters. So, I really enjoyed getting to see the bits and pieces of Aboriginal culture that was included in this book. I think the culture was implemented seamlessly too, as in it was just a part of the book. I mention this, because I’ve read books in the past, that for the purpose of this post we’ll call One Man Guy by Michael Barakiva, that have implemented bits of culture very poorly. Like, instead of it just being part of the book and the plot, it halts all progress in the book for a, “Hey, here’s this bit I wanted to include”, kind of moment.

To refer back to my assumptions of this book, when I assumed that this was going to be a coming-of-age story, I was right. And it’s also one of those “things just happen” books. There’s no major plot, it’s more or less just Jackson, Tomas, and the people of the Mish existing. In terms of what actually happens, I’d say that most, not all, of what happened was more or less what I would expect to happen in a book like this. And to specify what I mean by that: I mean in the sense of Jackson’s journey of self-discovery, in terms of his sexuality, was more or less what I expected. It was one of those that didn’t re-invent the wheel, it just made its own perfectly usable version of the wheel.

If I were to criticise something in this book, it was some of the word choices, because there is a lot of giggling in this book. A lot of the characters just giggle in response to things. There were a couple of dialogue tags that were giggle or giggled, and that did make me think, “How do you giggle words?” I know that’s not normally something I’d flag up, but the giggling came up so frequently that it did make me wish that there had been other words used in place, because quite a lot of the time, it was just “giggle” or “giggled”, with no addition to it. There was no telling the reader how they giggled, so all of the giggling kind of blended into one, generic, giggle.

If I were to sum up this book, it’d be like a bubble. The closer you got to the end, the bigger the bubble got, and the smaller the space got, until it popped. But once it popped, the wait is finally over, and you’re relieved because you realised it was actually only a bubble.

I thought that this was a solid good book. It didn’t fashion rats snatch my wig off, and it’s not blasting into my top books of the year, book it was good.

Okay, bye!