Shadowboxing

'Shadowboxing' is a collection of ten linked episodes, sharing common themes and characters, from the life of a boy growing up in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in the 1960s.

Michael's working-class Catholic family is held together by his long-suffering mother but dominated by his sullen father's drinking and rage. The family live as though under siege, surviving through thrift and guile in the midst of poverty and violence. Set against this darkness, Michael is a Huck Finn character with the Yarra River as his inner-Melbourne Mississippi which he explores with a hunger for adventure and wild, dangerous fun.

Michael's voice sets the tone of the stories: of innocence exposed to a brutal world that he explores with naïve wonder. But he is not stifled by brutality; rather, his gentle nature means that the world he encounters hits the reader with a raw immediacy.

This is also the story of Fitzroy and it conveys the spiritual landscape of the suburb, full of local characters and eccentrics. Shadowboxing is an extraordinary achievement, a beautifully rendered time capsule of the 1960s, capturing a period of decay and change as it is revealed to a young boy discovering the world.