KEY POINTS:
Bone By Bone
By Tony Johnston
Text, $27
When I read in the publicity blurb that this novel is "in the tradition of To Kill A Mockingbird", I rolled my eyes assuming it was an oversell. But comparisons with Harper Lee's modern classic are valid. This is a little gem of a book, that ought to become a classic itself.
It's set in Tennessee in 1951 - a time when racial hatred wasn't just accepted, it was ingrained. David Church is a young boy whose father, the town doctor, has declared he'll shoot any "nigger" who dares come into their home.
The problem for David is that his best friend Malcolm Deeter is black. Their forbidden friendship is portrayed as an innocent, joyful thing that's underscored by a constant sense of threat. Their days are filled with boyhood fun - peeing contests, pig hunts and secret hideouts. Malcolm is David's "heart friend" and his blood brother. They love each other. And yet this is a town where the Klu Klux Klan drive through in a cavalcade, a place where bad things can happen to a black boy who draws attention to himself.
Johnston's genius shines through in the portrayal of David's family: his racist father, so full of hate and yet so tender when he wants to be, his sassy harridan of a great-grandmother who's 100 years old and still driven by prejudice, and his colourful uncle Lucas who tries to help David make sense of it all.
This is American author Johnston's first young adult novel, but she's written numerous children's books, which explains her ability to get right to the heart of the story. As outlined in her introduction, she's drawn on her own childhood experiences, growing up in the 1940s and 50s with a racist father, who even today she is haunted by.
So yes, this novel more than stands up to the comparison, but it isn't just an imitation of To Kill A Mockingbird. The racism here is more overt, the language more brutal and raw. It's a slim book, but reading it right now, as a black man makes his bid for the presidency, is a powerful reminder of how much the United States has changed, and how much it needed to. Bone by Bone is that rare thing - a compelling page-turner that's gorgeously written. Both poignant and shocking, it's a coming-of-age story that deserves to be widely read.
