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Quote by Jon Doust

“The boarding school memoir or novel is an enduring literary subgenre, from 1950s classics such as The Catcher in the Rye to Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. Doust’s recognisably Australian contribution to the genre draws on his own experiences in a West Australian boarding school in this clever, polished, detail-rich debut novel. From the opening pages, the reader is wholly transported into the head of Jack Muir, a sensitive, sharp-eyed boy from small-town WA who is constantly measured (unfavourably) against his goldenboy brother. The distinctive, masterfully inhabited adolescent narrator recalls the narrator in darkly funny coming-of-age memoir Hoi Polloi (Craig Sherborne)—as does the juxtaposition of stark naivety and carefully mined knowingness.’ — Bookseller+Publisher”

Quote by Jon Doust

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Boy on a Wire

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Jon Doust

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“As for Gus, he had come to Haddan with no appreciation for the human race and no expectations of his fellow man. He was full ready to confront contempt; he'd been beleaguered and insulted often enough to have learned to ignore anything with a heartbeat. Still, every once in a while he made an exception, as he did with Carlin Leander. He appreciated everything about Carlin and lived for the hour when they left their books and sneaked off to the graveyard. Not even the crow nesting in the elm tree could dissuade him from his mission, for when he was beside Carlin, Gus acquired a strange optimism; in the light of her radiance the rest of the world began to shine. For a brief time, bad faith and human weakness could be forgotten or, at the very least, temporarily ignored. When it came time to go back to their rooms, Gus followed on the path, holding on to each moment, trying his best to stretch out time. Standing in the shadows of the rose arbor in order to watch Carlin climb back up the fire escape at St. Anne's, his heart ached. He could tell he was going to be devastated, and yet he was already powerless. Carlin always turned and waved before she stepped through her window and Gus Pierce always waved back, like a common fool, an idiot of a boy who would have done anything to please her.”

“I'm never going to send my children to boarding school. The boys can go to P.S. 148 with gangsters, and then go to Columbia & the girls can go to Hunter College and they'll all be morons but at least they wont have to tear around and get their teeth knocked out playing hockey every day. [Letter to R. Beverley Corbin, Jr, 3 October 1946]”

“The pious man knows nothing of a holy Catholic Church, whose world-embracing power other expositors prefer to contrast with the limited conventicles of the heretics. He only knows a holy Christianity whose goods consist in our becoming children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ, disciples of the Holy Spirit and comrades of the apostles. The article on eternal life fills us with hope and longing for the hereafter, protects us from the sorrows of this life and makes us willing to part from it. With the Amen, however, we surrender ourselves to God’s will to want what he wants from us.”