6
JANUARY 13�19, 2022
FROM THE SHELF
CHECKING OUT THE
WORLD OF BOOKS
‘The Dickens Boy’ tells the tale of
Charles Dickens’ youngest child
By Pamela Miller
Star Tribune
T
he great Australian writer Thomas
Keneally, now 86, has published
more than 30 novels, most notably
“Schindler’s List” and “The Daughters
of Mars.” Each of his works of historical
fi ction embodies hundreds of pages
with not a word wasted. All are meticu-
lously researched and fl awlessly writ-
ten. His 34th novel, “The Dickens Boy,”
is no exception.
It’s the story of Edward “Plorn” Dick-
ens, Charles Dickens’ youngest child,
who as an unremarkable 16-year-old
was pushed by his famous father into
emigrating to Australia in 1868 in hopes
he would fi nd his way — while staying
out of his father’s way.
Plorn is a compelling narrator, an en-
dearing mixture of youthful innocence
and cocky courage. He has a cool-
headed ability to observe and describe
other people, social situations and the
natural world. He is determined to learn
the business of raising sheep in the
sprawling wilds of Australia, to soak up
all he can from savvy colonials and to
skirt the noxious ones (there are plenty).
He quickly develops respect for
the immigrant Irish, often convicts or
the children of convicts, and for the
“darks,” the aboriginal people who
even then were marginalized and
sometimes murdered by Brits who
were sure this vast land was theirs to
possess and “improve.”
Plorn and his adventures, be they
blundering, buoyant, tragic or romantic,
provide the novel’s chief thread. But
woven into the boy’s story is that of
his father, who is revered by even the
isolated, bedraggled herders his son
encounters in the outback. Young Plorn
does not view his father as a legend,
but rather as a fl awed, mysterious
papa who sent him away, just as he had
earlier banished the mother of his 10
children after falling for a 19-year-old
Irish actress who would be his lover for
the rest of his life.
That’s a sore point for Plorn and his
siblings. They love their pa, they love
their ma, they love their Aunt Georgina,
their mother’s sister who raised them
after their mother’s banishment. But
they’ve never met the dark-tressed
Irish spoiler, and never will, and so their
experience of her is simply in their
judgment of their enigmatic father. The
real-life Dickens family was compli-
cated, and Keneally mines that intrigue
for all it’s worth.
Most profoundly, beneath the lively
stories of Plorn, his family and his Aus-
tralian odyssey, this novel is about Brit-
ish colonialism, on which modern Aus-
tralia was founded. It’s about the Brits’
repression and poisoning of aboriginal
culture, as well as the heady, complicat-
ed ways in which they shaped a nation’s
character, culture and economy. That’s
no small feat for a novel, especially one
by a writer in his 80s.
And that is Keneally’s gift — to cre-
ate historical fi ction with every shred of
fact available, while rounding it out with
a powerful narrative that, eerily enough,
could be exactly what happened. Here’s
hoping this is not this exceptional
writer’s last off ering to his beloved Aus-
tralia, and to those of us worldwide who
appreciate his one-of-a-kind gift.
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