A huge thank you to Elizabeth who has left this detailed and glowing review of my book...
"This self- published two- part work of fiction is a first from Rob White, and is a welcome addition to Australian literature.
The novel is dedicated to Bernard White who died at Sandakan Borneo in 1945.
Whilst there are clear autobiographical influences, this work is about Bernard-in book one the author beautifully depicts his childhood, and in book two his professional and personal life as a grown man and lawyer are explored.
Like the author, Bernard grows up in a Melbourne suburb and attends primary school, where in the 60’s, warm (undrinkable) bottled milk was offered each day to students, and the national anthem was sung with gusto in the quadrangle. Rob has superbly evoked what it was like to grow up in those times as the children of fathers who had recently served in the armed forces in World War 2 and whose anti -Japanese views were widely held in the community.
Bernard is the only child of a returned soldier and the author has depicted his childhood with many references to historic events, movies and songs that occurred in the 1960s in Melbourne. For me, it evoked exactly the childhood many of us experienced as children growing up in the suburbs. Book one is interspersed with chapters that depict events from 1945 at Sandakan, a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and the life of Bernard’s uncle, who eventually sadly died of malnutrition and maltreatment before the War ended.
In book two of the novel, Bernard as a grown man- a lawyer in a city law firm - ponders on his life and inherited traits (for example why he brushes his shoes each day) and book two illustrates how his childhood experiences and friends remain in his memory and shape his adult consciousness.
Bernard is deeply affected by two sentinel events -the death of his school friend Doug as a little boy, and the death of his uncle Bernard (for whom he is named) in the hell hole that was Sandakan.
These two events haunt Bernard all his life -in dreams and in reality (he witnessed the death of his school friend in a tragic accident)
The title of the novel derives from a dream and the magpie is a recurring motif.
Bernard sets out to recover his uncle’s war medals and book two is a contrast in that modern life and its issues are, with subtle humour, explored. We learn about life in the legal world - long lunches and “marketing”, sexual harassment in the work place (at the law firm’s Christmas party) cyber crime, attempted murder , and cosmetic surgery as pursued by the Brighton set. Bernard even has a fling with an old school mate!
Rob White’s conversational style of writing makes for an easy read, and whilst there is much humour in the novel, and there are many twists and turns as Bernard is swept along by his quest to get his life back on track, the novel has something to say about the human condition.
For all his cynicism in attending funerals to market his law practice, one is in no doubt that there is at the heart of Bernard, real reverence for the life of his namesake."
Elizabeth Kennedy, February 2023