Follow After Me

Follow After Me by Allison Marlow Paterson (Big Sky Publishing) PB RRP $17.50 ISBN: 9781925675580

Reviewed by Nikki M Heath

What happens when a rural teenager’s efforts to run with the popular crowd clash with her discoveries of a tragic wartime family history? Lizzie is a year 12 student who has turned her back on her studies, her family and her long-time friendship group after attracting the attentions of the cool girl and the most desirable boy in town. While her life begins to disintegrate, she reluctantly begins researching her family’s World War I history for a school project.

Alternating with Lizzie’s contemporary tale comes the story of her family’s experiences during the Great War, told through a combination of letters and third-person narration. The reader is immersed in the experience of war, from the process of enlisting and fighting on the Western Front, to bearing the inevitable anxiety and grief on the home front. While the historical chapters broadly focus around the relationship between Tom, the youngest of five sons to go to war, and his intended, Evie, the whole family’s experience is represented.

There’s a lot going on in this novel, which is heavily based on the author’s previous non-fiction work Anzac Sons: Five Brothers on the Western Front and her own family research. The contemporary chapters layer family tension, financial pressure, drought, teenage angst and year 12 stress. The reader is also confronted with a bald (though not excessively graphic) depiction of sexual assault and its aftermath. Marlow Paterson builds a strong sense of place through keen observation of small details (an ancient, dented kitchen table and threadbare tea-towel, for example) and the use of key features of the landscape to create echoing imagery.

The most important of those images is the ancient tree near the family homestead, which serves to tie the “then” and “now” strands of the story together with its significance to all the main protagonists. It serves as a motif for the novel’s unifying themes of family and romance, and the ghosts of the past lingering around its trunk give Lizzie valuable perspective on her life.

There is real emotional depth to this book, particularly in the historical chapters, which reduced me to tears and gave me chills down my arms on several occasions. Nevertheless, those chapters have some structural weaknesses. Marlow Paterson has tried to incorporate the breadth of her family’s experience and include some real letters from her research. This has educational value but also muddies points of view, which switch frequently between scenes and sometimes mid-scene. Some chapters, for example, take the point of view of the mother of the family, which resonated with me as a mother myself, but is not ideally tailored to a young adult audience. The emotional climax also comes relatively early in the novel – around the halfway mark – which makes for a long, melancholy denouement.

Follow After Me is a moving contribution to the increasingly popular YA war story genre. It will appeal to a wide range of older teenagers (and adults) from 14 years and up, particularly those with an interest in real stories, history or rural life, although it also has a place as contemporary fiction. Despite the female main protagonist, there is a lot here for boys, both in conveying the wartime experience of their predecessors and providing insight into the modern experience of teenage girls in a #MeToo era.

Anzac Sons: Five Brothers on the Western Front

Anzac Sons: Five Brothers on the Western Front by Allison Marlow Paterson (Big Sky Publishing)

HB RRP $24.99 PB

ISBN 9781925275148

Reviewed by Dianne Bates

This is an impressive-looking book for young readers, from its striking cover and internal design to the internal text which is broken up into chunks of information presented as postcards, newspaper clipped or letter texts, or in break-outs. Most books for young readers focus primarily on Gallipoli (in keeping with the 100^th landing of the Anzacs this year). But this covers the Western Front. Further, it is a unique story, being the tale of five Australian brothers all serving in WW 11 and, too, it is told by the grand-daughter of one of the three surviving brothers.

Photographs, maps, letters and facts tell the story of the Marlow boys – George (Geordie), twins Allan and Percy, Charles (Charlie) and Albert, four of whom enlisted in the 38^th Battalion. They were among over 330,000 Australians who served in the First World War, more than 60,000 dying.

Researching meticulously through over 500 letters (some unpublished), maps, and other war memoriam, Paterson tells the story of the family’s background that led to the five brothers leaving their family farm in Northern Victoria headed for the battlefield. Interwoven with personal stories (sixth brother Jim turned away due to poor eyesight, Charlie getting his teeth fixed in order to enlist), Anzac Sons tells of the war both in a broader sense, but also how it affected those left behind in Australia (such as the Marlow parents, Charles Senior and Sarah).  

We follow the progression of the war from Australia to the Somme and on to Fromelles, later to places like Pozieres. In break-out boxes we read of causalities and see photographs – black and white and coloured – of interesting places and events. There’s Charlie and Pearl, for instance, on their wedding day prior to Charles leaving for overseas, unaware his new wife is expecting. (Later we see Pearl with baby Eva, both gorgeous looking Marlows!)

There’s so much information in this book that is compelling and fascinating and so full of heart that any reader – children six to teens (and over) -- will want to linger over the written and visual texts. At the end of the book is a sub-heading, ‘We Will Remember Them.’ This book is a valuable way of personalizing war through one family’s sacrifice, but showing, too, how Australia’s sons and daughters participated with great bravery despite horrendous odds. It’s a book that ought to be in every school library, and hopefully too in many home libraries.