What about Tomorrow

Much of this story is set in Victoria, in Australia. The year is 1931 and Sam Clemens is fourteen. It is the Great Depression and money is very short, but Sam is a happy, carefree, dreamy boy who is filled with the joy of life. He is on his afternoon paper run and his bicycle is stacked with 64 newspapers. Then suddenly Sam rides his bike, which has no breaks, down hill into a stationary tram. In that moment Sam's childhood seems to end. Yes, he is battered and bruised and in shock, but something else seems to change inside Sam, like a door shutting. The newspapers are lost, his bike is smashed to pieces and there is no way his mum can afford to pay for 64 . Without his bike Sam can't earn any more money for his family, let alone pay the debt. In one fateful moment Sam decided he can't return home to become a burden on his cash strapped family. He must become a man and go it on his own. The year is 1941, World War 2 is raging, and Sam Clemens is a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. He is stationed somewhere in England and he and his crew risk their lives daily fighting against the Germans. Once again Sam must face new challenges and be a man. The story shifts back and forth between these two time zones. Gradually we come to understand Sam's life, both as a youth and as a man. This was Ian Southall's first novel "after a period of three years of personal anguish, during which he believed his 'sun had set'.' Rather than his career as a novelist ending, he "emerged to offer a new and compelling approach to his writing." This is a book about responsibility and the harshness of life. But it is also a book about kindness, good-humor and the sheer joy of living. Sam is an imaginative boy but his life is not totally lost in fantasy. Rather his imagination eventually leads him to moments of great clarity, where the essence of life is distilled into happiness and sadness. Life is not a set of neat and orderly arranged events, and, following that rule, this book does not have any 'pat' answers, clear endings, or prim morals. None the less we get a sense of 'going somewhere', of getting to know and like Sam, of learning things along with him. As always with Southall, long personal monologues give us a deep understanding of his main character, though those passages are neatly interspersed with descriptions of events, so we gain a sense of interesting momentum and progression. The shifts in time add greatly to this book. They invite comparisons and contrasts between events. By looking into both time zones we see the bitterness and sweetness of life as hopes are achieved and left undone. We see maturity just beginning and in full flight. Southall is one of my favorite teenage fiction authors and I am happy to award this book five points.