Bryce Courtenay: Matthew Flinders' cat

By GARTH GEORGE

The colourful dust jackets of Bryce Courtenay's novels have twinkled at me from library and bookstore shelves for years but for some reason I have never been tempted to pick one up.

This, then, was my first experience of this Australian pretender to the ranks of Thomas Kenneally, Morris West and John Cleary.

Matthew Flinders, the first man to circumnavigate Australia, back in 1802-03, did indeed have a cat named Trim, a bronze figure of which adorns a window ledge of the Sydney Public Library alongside a small park.

Which is where this novel begins with the meeting of erstwhile high-flying barrister Billy O'Shannessy, who has opted for a life of a drunken derelict, living in the starlight hotel, and 11-year-old street kid named Ryan, son of a drug-addicted prostitute and whose much-loved grandmother is dying.

For the next 600 or so pages, while the relationship between Billy and Ryan develops - ultimately to their mutual benefit - the reader is led through the seamy side of Sydney, populated by a multiplicity of characters from the saintly to the downright evil.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, crime, violence, paedophilia, child rape, prostitution, standover tactics, murder, political and police corruption and every other vice are on display alongside the redemptive activities of the Salvation Army, hospitals such as St Vincents, and other charitable organisations and individuals fighting a losing battle in trying to give succour to those in such desperate need.

Billy and Ryan navigate this hell on earth for page after page until, as if he had become sick of the whole thing, the author rapidly wraps the story up in the final 50 or so pages.

Properly edited - by 200 pages at least and including all reference to Matthew Flinders' cat - this would be a good read.

Viking

$49.95