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I think a majority of Australian people around my age read this book when they were in high school. It was hugely popular and for very good reasons. I read this book when I was in grade nine. I read more back then, than I do now. I used to curl up on my bed, book in hand and read for hours. I not only read “Tomorrow When the War Began” but I read every book in the series as soon as they came out. I guess you could say this was my “Harry Potter”.
The story begins with small group of friends Ellie Linton, Homer Yannos, Lee (whose surname is never mentioned), Kevin Holmes, Corrie Mackenzie, Robyn Mathers and Fi Maxwell who are getting ready to go on a week long camping trip to Hell (a mountainous national park). They kiss their families goodbye and head off for a week of fun only teenagers can understand. Once the week is over, the group returns to find an eerie and gruesome sight. Ellie the narrator of the book returns home to find her family missing and her pet dogs butchered. This is only the beginning of the horrors. They eventually realise with some interrogations that Australia has been invaded (by whom nobody is quite sure). Ellie and the rest of the group decide to return to Hell and start their own guerrilla campaign.
This plot may sound far-fetched but John Marsden makes you believe it. I remember lying on my bed wishing I was Ellie but at the same time knowing I could never handle being in her shoes. This is not only a story of a small group taking on a war, for me it was also a coming of age story. The teenagers realise they are no longer children and they are all their families/country have left.
This book was very intense when I read it, I’m sure if I read it now I would still feel the same. I recommend this book to everyone, young or old. Guys will like it for the action (even though the narrator is female) and the girls will enjoy it because they can relate to Ellie and the other female members of the group. Please read this book or give it to your older children to read; they won’t be disappointed.
If you are interested I have just added two new drawings to my picture/painting page. I was home alone the other night and decided to get my pencils out. Let me know what you think, be honest, constructive criticism is good for the artist. If it is bad criticism even better, I can become a tortured soul artist.
My friend and I were leaving the gym one night when a homeless man trying to sell T-shirts stopped us. We had a quick look but everything seemed to be a little dodgy until my friend spotted this book. He bought it for me for five dollars and told me I could read it when I ran out of better ones. I think this makes quite an interesting story. We bought a Nobel Prize winning book from a homeless guy outside a gym!
The story in this book is not as strange as the one above but it becomes unusual and quiet annoying.
Paul Rayment is riding down Magill Road in Adelaide when a reckless driver knocks him from his bike. Waking up for and operation and still feeling groggy from the drugs, Paul comes to realise that he consented to the amputation of his leg, above the knee (in the book this is emphasised and seem worse than an amputation below the knee).
Being a man of close to sixty Paul was set in his ways and has to struggle to regain some normalcy in his life with the help of his day nurse Marijanna. This closeness impacts on Paul’s life and in turn the lives of Marijanna and her family.
After reading the first third of the story I was really getting into and starting to enjoy it when the character of Elizabeth Costello is introduced. This old lady (70, I think that can be considered old) with a bad heart turns up on Paul’s doorstep and forces her way into his life. What is strange about this, is this woman knows everything about Paul even what he is thinking (he claims it is like she is reading his diary, if he had one). There is no explanation in the book as to how this woman found Paul or how she knows everything. These lack of answers and reason made me irritated and detest this woman.
This was an interesting book but I wondered did it deserve a Nobel Prize? I was expecting some thing absorbing, something I couldn’t read with out an emotional or psychological attachment. Unfortunately this book left me confused and dissatisfied. This might be your cup of tea but not mine.
