GatesyRead

  Tom Keneally is a most prolific writer, with 34 published novels, 15 works of significant non-fiction, and two children’s collections. Almost Dickensian in output. His 1982 Booker-prize winning Schindler's Ark is his most famous book internationally and the basis of the film Schindler's List (1993) directed by Stephen Spielberg. Keneally, now aged 86, has had a long career and knows a thing or two about writing. The Dickens Boy is a richly imagined novel about the real-life journey to Australia by Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known to everyone as Plorn, Dicken’s tenth child. Plorn is a likeable young Englishman, only sixteen when the story begins. His first stay in Australia is at a station named Eli Elwah, and he only lasts 12 hours. Young Dickens is angered by the station manager’s rude inquiries and innuendo about his father’s personal life, and goes so far as to threaten a ‘trial of honour’ to which the station manager replies, ‘Can you believe this bloke? (p.17). Stir