My goodness, this is a confronting novel! While the title was apparently deliberately chosen to echo Randolph Stow’s To the Islands, and the setting shares some geophysical similarities, Jon Doust’s new novel pursues existential issues of an entirely different kind.

Doust made his literary debut with Boy on a Wire, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2010. This novel, To the Highlands, is book two of what will become a trilogy called One Boy’s Journey to Man, and book one, it is a work of fiction woven from the author’s own experiences. While Boy on a Wire was an expose of the brutality of boarding schools in the 1960s, To the Highlands follows the same character into early adulthood, where the line between victim and perpetrator becomes blurred.

Narrated in the first person by the central character Jack Muir, To the Highlands is a coming-of-age story which charts some very bad behaviour indeed. Jack, ( the author), has failed his final year at a posh grammar school in Perth, disappointing his respectable parents and embarrassing his successful brother who’s studying law and will also be a respectable adult one day. Jack’s father uses his influence to get Jack a job in the Colonial Bank of Australia, and when he makes a mess of that because ‘numbers are not his strong point’, that influence is used to pack him off to work in a New Guinea branch of the bank.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/07/29/to...12review australia c21st3 s Deb Fitzpatrick2

First, I need to get some housekeeping out of the way: To the Highlands is published by Fremantle Press, which is also my publisher.

To the Highlands is Doust’s second work of fiction for adults, and the sequel to Boy on a Wire, which was published to much acclaim and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2010. Wow. Big shoes to fill.

I haven’t yet read Boy on a Wire – though my husband did, and loved it – but having just roared through To the Highlands, I will now put Boy on a Wire on the top of my reading pile.

To the Highlands isn’t a book for the faint-hearted. It took guts to write this book, and, to a certain extent, it takes guts to read it. It’s also gut-wrenchingly tender and sad in parts, as well as gut-churningly debauched. It is, in the truest sense, confronting. At times I had to put it down, just to pause.

To the Highlands recounts the years following Jack Muir’s departure from one of the best boys’ schools in Perth, where, to his parents’ and teachers’ mortification, he fails to excel. His brothers, however, are on a trajectory to success. Jack’s parents despair of him. His father takes the last, lowly resort: he begs the bank to give Jack a job. It does, and soon he is sent to Papua New Guinea. Jack’s self-flagellating, reckless behaviour corkscrews towards a ghastly climax.

Jack’s interest, of course, couldn’t be further from the bank, where it is hoped he will redeem himself by displaying motivation and reliability. Jack doesn’t give a shit about balancing the books each day. He’s obsessed with losing his virginity, and lose it he does, with one local woman, and then another, and another, and on and on ... Lubrication comes in the form of booze. Every day after work, Jack and his mates drink themselves into oblivion. As readers, it’s unpleasant to witness. Jon Doust doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t airbrush the truth, he doesn’t avoid it; he goes in, right in, to dark, painful places. The beautiful women Jack spends time with provide solace and comfort and tenderness when he most needs it – and when we do, too.

The problem is that, the drinking, the sex is often not wholesome. Jack is a boy amongst men, men who share the worst of their misogynism and alcoholism and fail at every turn in their duty of care for this young man. But that is what men did then. These men. They screwed women. They drank till they vomited, they had punch-ups and they had no problem passing on their toxic baselessness to any other young, lost men in the fold.

Thankfully, there are one or two decent men Jack spends time with. It’s these friendships that signal his potential, illuminating his desire for fairness and equality.

Jon Doust handles the many ambivalences of the male Australian expat life brilliantly in To the Highlands. We see racism and hatred in the many shadows of this book, yet know this is not the language of our protagonist, a loyal, idealistic, sensitive, funny and very lost young man. We watch him sliding grubbily down the chute into hell, with grown men standing by laughing as he does. It’s hard to watch. It’s essential viewing. Reading.

Thank you to Fremantle Press and Goodreads for their giveaway competition.
2 s ChrisAuthor 1 book98

Smooth reading from the creative Mr Doust. Great work. This IS late 1960s PNG, as Jack (first seen at boarding school in Boy on a Wire) and now a young man is thrown into the dark end of Australian colonial life; booze, bonking and racism.1 Zuzu Burford377 34

Only *** for me. I found it tedious for 2/3, and only the last section raised it to 3. Disappointed as I have been hearing so much concerning this author and was really wanting the story to develop more than just getting pissed and throwing up.australian-authors Robin Thomson10

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