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Gary
Crew and Philip Neilsen. Edward Britton. Lothian,
2000. |
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It
is not an easy matter to review books by people you
know. Aside from the ethical considerations there is
a minefield of dangerous personal and emotional territory
to navigate. I thus begin writing about Edward Britton
by acknowledging that both the authors, Gary Crew and
Philip Neilsen, are friends and colleagues. Despite
my professional and personal connections to the authors
I did, however, come to this novel with little insider
knowledge of the actual text other than its setting
and some of the research the authors undertook. I did
want to like the book, but I almost always begin reading
fiction in this spirit, and soon was embroiled in the
story and hearing not the voices of those I knew, but
those of the characters they have created.
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The
eponymous Edward Britton is a seventeen year old actor,
falsely accused of the theft of costumes from his employer
and transported to Point Puer boys' prison at Port Arthur
in the 1840s. Britton is tall, comely and educated, but
is not spared (nor is the reader) the violence and real
hardships the boy convicts suffered. The other main character,
Izod Wolfe, an Irish boy, is fired with hatred and the
desire for revenge against the brutal prison governor,
Buckridge, who caused the death of every member of his
large family in Ireland. Where Britton could be seen as
light and enlightenment and Wolfe darkness and misery,
each of the two teenagers is given a more complex character
and motivation than these oppositional traits. Romantic
interest is provided in Susan, Buckridge's daughter, but
she is no stereotyped wilting English rose, and articulates
a voice of assertive humanity against the sadism which
pervades the settlement. |
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The
surgeon, Patterson, is a further foil to this pervasive
culture of brutality, treating the boys after they are
beaten, providing commentary on class and ambition, and
giving the authors a number of wonderfully vivid opportunities
to comment on the medical practices of the day. These
include the therapeutic uses of arsenic and a truly harrowing
scene of amputation (thankfully with the help of the newly
discovered ether). |
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