Book: South of Darkness by John Marsden
By: Suzanne King on behalf of the Friends of Noosa Library
South of Darkness is available at the Noosa Library, Wallace Park, Noosaville
BARNABY Fletch is his name, but he is without an identity: he has no father, no known ancestry – his origins are “shrouded in mystery” at a time when it was everything to know who your grandfather was.
Barnaby manages to raise himself on the backstreets of London and becomes a reluctant adventurer caught in a series of thrilling escapades from the “hell” that is London to Botany Bay, the new convict colony.
In John Marsden’s compelling new adult novel South of Darkness, Barnaby becomes a “self-made man” as he drifts through the identities of orphan, thief, and prodigal son to become a convict, sailor and finally native of the penal colony.
From the impressionable age of 13 he meets a number of nefarious characters unconsciously weighing them in a selective balance as he moves towards his own coming of age while emerging from the dark of London’s streets into the light of the New South Wales colony, south of the equator, and south of the darkness of his early youth.
With echoes of the plight of today’s immigrant refugees fleeing their known miseries for the absolute unknown that lies ahead, Marsden seems to be saying that our identity is not where or how we are born into this world, but rather who we become through our deeds and actions on life’s journey.
Why not take the journey?
