Something Somewhere

Something Somewhere by Richard Yaxley (Scholastic Australia) PB $18.99 ISBN 9781760266370

Reviewed by Karen Hendriks 

Richard Yaxley is an award-winning author based in Queensland. He has been the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. Richard has received the medal in the Order of Australia for his services to education, literature and performing arts.

Malt and his mum move from place to place never staying too long. Malt’s world is turned upside down when they unexpectedly return to his mum’s hometown of Pembrooke. Malt learns they will be living with a grandmother he has never met. In Pembrooke Malt discovers there are many unspoken secrets, and he desperately seeks to find answers and to find a place to belong.

Yaxley masterfully creates many subplots alongside the main story that enhance the story and hook the reader. He lets the reader think and really care about Malt and his mum and grandmother. There is family dysfunction, but Yaxley ensures that family love shines through. He is not afraid to show how things really are in families, and he tackles difficult topics like teenage pregnancy, lack of a home, child/parent conflict and enabling behaviours. This is important for authenticity and shines a light upon issues to develop empathy and understanding.   

Yaxley’s voice is compelling, you feel like you are experiencing what Malt does. She repeated it anyway, the mantra. ‘Keep yourself to yourself. Don’t bother people.’ Yaxley has a way with words that creates a world that is both believable and immersive. He knows and understands the dynamics of relationships between people and how their own life experiences and circumstances determine how they interact with others. His language choices and dialogue are strong and placed expertly in the right place at the right time.

Malt has learnt to act small and knows how to react to his mother and her actions. As the story unfolds, and more characters are woven into the story little pieces of the puzzle slowly unfold. The reader is left asking the same questions as Malt. Malt is never truly alone because he has Banjo, his little dog, by his side. Yaxley has created memorable characters in a powerful story.

Something Somewhere is a middle grade novel that makes a great read for readers 11-14 years. It is a book that will have great appeal to children, teachers and librarians. It is a gripping read that will not disappoint its young readers.

Leonardo Forever

Leonardo Forever by Richard Yaxley (Omnibus books, an imprint of Scholastic Australia, 2023). PB RRP $17.99. e-Book RRP $10.96. ISBN 9781761203258

Reviewed by Debra Williams

The enigmatic Leonardo Da Vinci continues to fascinate so many, with his brilliant, inquiring mind, artwork, and designs. He was a larger-than-life figure.

This is a tale which involves not just Leonardo, but his friend Dante, and notably, 14-year-old Annalisa de Torriano, who travels from Florence with her family to live at a new estate purchased by her influential father in the countryside village of Vinci. Anna hates the thought of leaving her hometown, and the short dalliance she was hoping to continue with a boy named Matteo. She is creative, imaginative, and artistic, and feels that she will be stifled in the countryside. It is easy to imagine a typical 14-year-old girl pouting, defying her father and wishing to rebel, even as far back as 1465.

Anna finds, however, that she is enamoured by the countryside, and even more so by the company of two boys: Leonardo and his friend Dante Bellomo. She begins to embrace the new life and friendship, matching wits with Leonardo, and realises she has a crush on him. Could it be love? After all, he is only 13. The three friends spend long hours together. When Anna’s parents decide she is a suitable age to be married off, to, of all people, Matteo (whom she has long forgotten), she is furious. The daughters have no rights and no say in their futures: the father’s wishes are supreme, and the oldest boy is the inheritor of all the family’s wealth in that society.

When her father says they will return to Vinci for a short time, Anna determines to go back to Leonardo, and declare her love. However, she isn’t prepared for the dramatic and tragic twist in the tale. What is her destiny?

Author Richard Yaxley has written an intriguing fictional work based on historical information. This is a story for the YA group, 11-14+ years.

Harmony

Harmony by Richard Yaxley (Scholastic) PB RRP $18.99 ISBN 9781760973261

Reviewed by Kylie Buckley

In Australia in 1914, Tom Stott, an eighteen-year-old farmer’s son, met the love of his life, Gracie O’Donnell. Heartbreak followed when Tom learnt she was promised to another. Feeling empty, he enlisted in the army and set off for war.

Years later, the story reconnects with Gracie married to Ray Clifford. Their son, Will, has a strained relationship with his father, but shares a beautiful connection with his angelic mother who encourages him to spread his wings.

The narrative follows Will as he moves to England, then starts a family of his own in Ireland. When his children grow older, one of his daughters follows her heart to America where she has a son.

As time passes, all four generations end up together in Australia and hidden stories of the past are disclosed.

Harmony is a young adult novel that follows a family across multiple generations and countries. It is beautifully written with a myriad of complex characters and intriguing storylines to engage the reader. It includes themes of family, love, relationships, connection, belonging and secrets. It is highly recommended for an audience 12 years and older.

It is interesting to note that while this work is largely one of fiction, it was written as a tribute to the author’s great uncle, Thomas Stott, who died at Gallipoli during World War I.

A New Kind of Everything

A New Kind of Everything by Richard Yaxley, (Omnibus Books), 2020, PB RRP $18.99 ISBN: 9781743834077

Reviewed by Pauline Hosking

Hey, son, you worked out yet what love is? This is a question Dinny’s father used to ask him. Now his father has died in an unlikely car accident.

14-year-old Dinny is a quiet, contained boy with a sensitive nature, struggling to keep “acting like a man”. His mother is battling her way through grief at her loss. His older brother reacts by leaving school and joining Return, a far-right gang that aims at bringing back the real Australia. In an attempt to find himself, Dinny forms a friendship with Krush who believes that taking risks is the only way to stop being boring.

The text is divided into three parts: The Requiem, which looks at the immediate aftermath of the death; If We Jumped, which deals with Dinny and  Krush; A New Kind of Everything which explains his father’s past. This section also involves redemption and yet another death for Dinny and his mother to cope with. The book ends with a rather strange time shift into the future when Dinny is an adult. 

Richard Yaxley is a brilliant, original, author. In 2018 he won the Prime Minister’s award for young adult literature. His writing is full of interesting uses of language. There are moments of intense action and quite a lot of violence, although some of the darker moments are hinted at rather than described in detail. The characters are three-dimensional and totally believable. Especially interesting are Dinny’s neighbours, Mr and Mrs Wen, who offer a poignant retelling of their migrant experience.

Yaxley has a wonderful ear and his dialogue throughout is authentic. Dinny’s first meeting with the criminal Jaxon Cannane, told almost entirely in dialogue, fills the reader with a horrible sense of fear for the future.

A New Kind of Everything is a gutsy, no-holds-barred YA novel, recommended for readers 14+. It will particularly resonate with boys.

Richard Yaxley's Latest Achievement

Here’s some good news! This month Omnibus Books has published Richard Yaxley’s new novel, A New Kind of Everything (Scholastic). Here’s a blurb about it?

After their father’s reckless death, the Gallagher family must find new directions. Dinny’s mum finds a new form of freedom, but the paths the boys are choosing are pointing them in dangerous directions. Fourteen-year-old Dinny is in danger of repeating his father’s behaviour, and his older brother Carl sees an opportunity for independence.

But when Carl becomes involved in the aggressive agenda of an anti-immigration group, a different crisis develops, leading the family to tragedy, insight, and rebirth.

For more information about Richard and his work, go to Web: https://richardwyaxley.com

Bookings: https://www.speakers-ink.com.au/speakers/richard-yaxley  

https://twitter.com/richardwyaxley

https://www.facebook.com/richardyaxleyauthor/

Joyous & Moonbeam

Joyous & Moonbeam by Richard Yaxley (Omnibus Books)
PB RRP $16.99
ISBN 978-1-86291-978-7
Reviewed by Jenny Heslop

Ashleigh’s family is a little messed up. She is fifteen and feels that life has slipped out of her control. After her latest ‘escapade’ Ashleigh is sent to do volunteer work in a daycentre for the disabled. It is here that she meets Joyous who opens her eyes to a new perspective on life. He teaches her to massage the bad to discover the good parts of life. ‘All life is joyous, and even the bad bits can be worked around a little.’ He calls her Moonbeam. In return, Ashleigh gives him respect, trust and companionship.

These two unlikely friends have much to teach each other about life, right when they both need it the most. Joyous has the desire and courage to keep his faith. This belief saves Joyous and gives him a rhythm without which life would be random and his world out of control. Rhythm is how he creates order. His belief system of working things around a little is one of the things Ashleigh desperately needs in her life. One of Ashleigh’s favourite quotes is a line from a Katy Perry song Fireworks – ‘After the hurricane comes a rainbow’ and she is trying to believe in this. As she learns from Joyous, Ashleigh realises that ‘caring for Joyous has pulled me back from the edge. That’s how it is with rainbows’.

This story was hard to get into initially. It is not an easy read. But it is a rich and rewarding one. It demands your attention, then gives back much to think about, with new perspectives on how life works and the cards that are dealt. The intriguing nature of the story creeps up slowly, but once you realise you are hooked it is unputdownable.

The language, while difficult at first, is almost like poetry. The chapters are told alternatively by three characters, Joyous, Ashleigh and Joyous’ mother, all in the first person with voices so distinctive there is never any confusion about who is speaking, even without quotation marks or tags. Joyous uses wonderful made up words such as sparklous, dandiful and bouciful and in context there is never a question about what he means.

There is a lot I would love to quote from this book. So much wonderful language, so many uplifting moments and so many rays of light and hope are present throughout its pages. I hope many young adults and adults alike read this story and get as much pleasure from this story as I did.