Book review: Eddy, Eddy by Kate de Goldi

Eddy, Eddy by Kate de Goldi

Eddy, Eddy – Kate de Goldi (Allen & Unwin, $29.99)

Reviewed by Louise Ward, Wardini Books

Eddy is a conundrum. A sweet 19-year-old soul, brought up by his Uncle Brain (yes, Brain), recently bereaved of their dog, Marley.

Stuff is going on for Eddy: some kind of catastrophic exit from his Catholic high school, a caustically clever but needy best friend in Thos More, a series of unsatisfactory jobs. Eddy is a deep teenaged sigh come to life.

Eddy is an orphan, his father Vincent having died from a drug overdose and his mother ethereally elsewhere. Brain is his rock, but Eddy is at the age of irritation, and dear, patient, cerebral Brain is his major irritant.

The love between the pair is palpable, and the makeshift family of Brain and his friends along with the Modern Priest (a teacher with whom Eddy clashed at school, and pointedly ignores at home) is unconventional, and a rich seam of humour.

Eddy finds great comfort in animals; he's good with them, and his pet minding business soon takes off as owners recommend him. This leads Eddy to becoming more than just a dog walker to one family as their complicated set of circumstances mean they come to rely on him, and in a way, he on them.

Kate de Goldi has a facility for, and no doubt fascination with, rich language and this plays out through Eddy, influenced by Brain.

With his love of literature and classical music, Eddy is an old soul, but tempered with the right and normal concerns of young people: love, sex, beer, and the teenaged boy's physical inability to give voice to a feeling. Circumstances contrive to make Eddy spill the emotional beans, and there are many of them.

If an eddy is an area of swirling water that forms behind an obstacle, like a boulder in a river, then this boy is that. We'll travel with him, whilst he overcomes.