![]() ![]() "Something was coming down over the house like a net," he says. Jimmy's sense of foreboding grows and grows and, one evening, when he looks at the sky, he sees a giant shadow. It was the words that made the opening." A mist one sees in adolescent boys so often, captured perfectly by Jimmy. If he said a word, even one, the word made a space for the thing he didn't like or want to come crashing in and detonate him. "If Robby stayed quiet, the distance between him and something he didn't like or want grew more quickly. Robby is Jimmy's older brother, whose eyes are becoming guarded as he shuts down in this troubled family. Gav is his bitterly disappointed father, whose depressing job is scraping away rust in the Mobil refinery in Melbourne, and who becomes violent when he drinks too much Cutty Sark. ![]() ![]() Paula is Jimmy's big, doughy, overprotective, asthmatic mother, who smells of vanilla and whom he adores. Not a book one would pick up lightly, but Laguna has made it more than tolerable, with a beautiful, sombre writing style, relieved by occasional happy-go-lucky moments and strangely surprising resilience and pure joy in Jimmy. ![]()
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