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Snake Bite
Having just finished school, the summer of 2009 presents endless possibilities for 17-year-old goth Jez. Living with her alcoholic mother in a government rental in Canberra's outer-suburbs, with little money or future prospects, her time is spent with emo Lukey trying to conjure quick fixes for their boredom - tatts, piercings, drinking, Xbox, weed and pills.
Alienated and intimidated when Lukey becomes sexually involved with the effervescent Melbournite Laura, Jez renews a friendship with her neighbour, Casey, who's working as a stripper and raking the money in. When Casey's bikie punk brother, Cash enters the picture, Jez is besotted, though also terrified with good reason. At the same time, Jez's mum hooks up with a local bartender placing a strain on their already fragile relationship. Over the summer, Jez runs a gauntlet of new experiences and discovers she is not quite ready for the world outside her neighbourhood.
Alienated and intimidated when Lukey becomes sexually involved with the effervescent Melbournite Laura, Jez renews a friendship with her neighbour, Casey, who's working as a stripper and raking the money in. When Casey's bikie punk brother, Cash enters the picture, Jez is besotted, though also terrified with good reason. At the same time, Jez's mum hooks up with a local bartender placing a strain on their already fragile relationship. Over the summer, Jez runs a gauntlet of new experiences and discovers she is not quite ready for the world outside her neighbourhood.
- GenresYoung AdultFiction
328 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2013
95 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
August 20, 2013
This one's a creeper. It totally took me by surprise..
I bought this book for two reasons:
1) It's a contemporary YA novel set in Canberra.
This never happens. Canberra is only ever written about in the context of politics or local history.
2) The comparison to Puberty Blues on the back cover blurb.
I’m not much of a YA fan in general, but Puberty Blues is a sentimental favourite of mine for its gritty, realistic portrayal of growing up in Australia.
As it turns out, the story is set in Kambah - a notably dodgy suburb of Canberra, in which I lived for several years. The main character, Jez, is living just a few streets away from my old home. I can't tell you how strange it was to be reading about local icons such as:
• the kitschy sheep sculptures on Drakeford Drive (which people like myself used to dress up in costumes for shits & giggles)
• the James Court Apartments (which was the height of bogan sophistication if you wanted to party in the city and not have to worry about getting back home or getting kicked out for being rowdy. I threw my partner's 30th birthday there)
• the Kambah Village shops, where a single mum once tried to pick up my gay flatmate at the counter, while the checkout chick was screaming at her to go home and tell her daughter she was going to get her head kicked in. This happened while her small child calmly stared up at my flatmate as if to say, "Are you my new daddy?"
Anyone who has lived in Canberra will probably find it worth the recommended retail price just to see these details in print, but there is much more to the book.
From the beginning, it's clear that Thompson knows her subject matter. There is the ring of absolute truth to her characters and the way in which they live. It's a warts and all coming-of-age story, where the "warts" include multigenerational poverty, drugs, petty jealousies, immature parenting and sexual predators. Anyone who has ever lived on the wrong side of the tracks will instantly recognise this as being authentic. I’m not sure how it will translate to readers from other countries, but from an insider perspective, this is as realistic a portrayal of mainstream, low-income Australian culture as I have ever seen.
For the first half of the book, it seemed to me that this was all there was going to be – a snapshot more than a story. In the end though, a narrative does form, and I really came to care about the characters and what would become of them. Since I’m hardly in the target demographic, I’d consider that a win!
Watching the film Puberty Blues when I was younger first gave me the idea that even lives like the ones I saw around me were “worthy” of being shown on screen. That came as a revelation at the time, when all I ever saw on screen were people living more.. sanitised lives than mine. Somehow that film legitimised my own culture for me. I hope this book can do the same for people playing Goon of Fortune today.
**************************
[posted before reading] A YA novel set in Canberra? A title font that gives you seizures? I'm IN!
I bought this book for two reasons:
1) It's a contemporary YA novel set in Canberra.
This never happens. Canberra is only ever written about in the context of politics or local history.
2) The comparison to Puberty Blues on the back cover blurb.
I’m not much of a YA fan in general, but Puberty Blues is a sentimental favourite of mine for its gritty, realistic portrayal of growing up in Australia.
As it turns out, the story is set in Kambah - a notably dodgy suburb of Canberra, in which I lived for several years. The main character, Jez, is living just a few streets away from my old home. I can't tell you how strange it was to be reading about local icons such as:
• the kitschy sheep sculptures on Drakeford Drive (which people like myself used to dress up in costumes for shits & giggles)
• the James Court Apartments (which was the height of bogan sophistication if you wanted to party in the city and not have to worry about getting back home or getting kicked out for being rowdy. I threw my partner's 30th birthday there)
• the Kambah Village shops, where a single mum once tried to pick up my gay flatmate at the counter, while the checkout chick was screaming at her to go home and tell her daughter she was going to get her head kicked in. This happened while her small child calmly stared up at my flatmate as if to say, "Are you my new daddy?"
Anyone who has lived in Canberra will probably find it worth the recommended retail price just to see these details in print, but there is much more to the book.
From the beginning, it's clear that Thompson knows her subject matter. There is the ring of absolute truth to her characters and the way in which they live. It's a warts and all coming-of-age story, where the "warts" include multigenerational poverty, drugs, petty jealousies, immature parenting and sexual predators. Anyone who has ever lived on the wrong side of the tracks will instantly recognise this as being authentic. I’m not sure how it will translate to readers from other countries, but from an insider perspective, this is as realistic a portrayal of mainstream, low-income Australian culture as I have ever seen.
For the first half of the book, it seemed to me that this was all there was going to be – a snapshot more than a story. In the end though, a narrative does form, and I really came to care about the characters and what would become of them. Since I’m hardly in the target demographic, I’d consider that a win!
Watching the film Puberty Blues when I was younger first gave me the idea that even lives like the ones I saw around me were “worthy” of being shown on screen. That came as a revelation at the time, when all I ever saw on screen were people living more.. sanitised lives than mine. Somehow that film legitimised my own culture for me. I hope this book can do the same for people playing Goon of Fortune today.
**************************
[posted before reading] A YA novel set in Canberra? A title font that gives you seizures? I'm IN!
July 28, 2013
Finally there is a novel that is a true representation of Canberra, rather than the cliché of prudishness, clinical cleanness and affluence that is usually portrayed by people who have not lived here. In Snake Bite the story revolves around the reality of suburban living; struggle town syndrome, reckless lifestyles and people just trying to escape their mundane lives. The characters in this novel are very real. Their lives are stripped bare, making them vulnerable and therefore very likeable. The story is told in the first person through the eyes of teenager Jez. There is a brutal honesty to the way the author, ChristieThompson tells us the story of Jez’s life and aspirations. Jez has all the cards stacked against her but she still has hope that her life will one day be better. The thing that grounds her is her relationship with her family and friends. Most people will identify with the growing pains that Jez goes through and this makes her story so powerful and frightening at the same time. There is no holding back when the author exposes the exploits of teenagers in the Canberra suburb of Kambah; sex, drugs, and bad language are all very confronting but essential to portraying the real suburban landscape. It was a terrific read. As I read the novel I had vivid images of the way these characters would appear on screen. The story would be brilliant for adaptation to a TV mini-series or movie. Someone should snap up the screen rights real quick! I confess that I live in Kambah. I had quite a few chuckles about the local references although those who are not from Canberra will still appreciate the characters who could be from anywhere in the suburbs. Well done to Thompson for “telling it like it is”.
September 17, 2013
This was a great book! I really enjoyed reading it and, even though it's not my usual genre, Christie Thompson's writing pulled me in completely. I found myself sharing Jaz's thoughts and even finding myself as surprised as she was at some of the more epiphany-type moments in the story. It takes a great talent to pull the reader in that much. When I started, I was worried about the cultural clash (I'm from the States) and the possible difficulty with the slang that I had read about in other reviews, but I didn't have any problem keeping up with the story. The theme transcends Australian youth, resonating with the universal trials of a modern teenager. The language was beautifully done. So much about a culture and generation is learned through the language that they use, and the author embraced it and used it as a tool to further pull the reader into the world she created. This is a definitely a good read, and I look forward to seeing what else Christie Thompson writes in the future.
November 26, 2013
A coming of age story set in the suburbs of Australia's capital during the 1990's, Snake Bite is a story of adolescent rebellion and disovery.
It's the summer before her final year of school and seventeen year old Jez spends most of her time with her best friend Lukey, contemplating new piercings, playing X-box and popping pills... until new girl Laura lures Luke away. While her single mother works nights and spends her days sleeping off a hangover, Jez seeks the company of her neighbour, Casey, who has no qualms about exposing Jez to the excesses of her lifestyle.
The themes of the novel are universal amongst adolescents, despite being couched in local colour. For Jez, all the angst, fear and boredom involved in growing up is complicated by poverty, family dysfunction and addiction. The summer challenges her ideas about love, sex and friendship when she confronts betrayal and exploitation. Thompson deftly evokes the intensity of emotion and drama teenagers struggle with as they learn about who they are, and who they want to be.
The story also explores the fragile relationship between Jez and her mother. Like most teens Jez considers her mother an embarrassment but the issues between them are compounded by Jez's mothers alcoholism and lack of responsibility.
Change happens slowly, and often painfully, but eventually Jez discovers hope for a future that won't necessarily include dealing drugs, stripping or repeating her mother's mistakes.
Perhaps because I have a 17 year old daughter, the slang used doesn't bother me the way in which it seems to irritate others. The few terms I was unfamiliar with could be understood by context, and neither do I have any problem with the casual use of explicit language, though some might find it confronting.
Snake Bite is a gritty, poignant and authentic novel, a raw slice of contemporary Australian life exposed for its uncomfortable truths. I enjoyed it and I'd recommend it particularly to YA readers, and adults who experienced adolescence in the 1990's.
July 13, 2013
I've been waiting for an Australian book like this (2011's The Casuals was such a disappointment that I'm still whinging about it two years later) and I hit the jackpot with this because not only is it Aussie, it's also Canberran; the capital that Australia forgets. This book tells my story, or a version of it. It's being called gritty, yes I suppose, because real life is gritty. Sure, its a decade later, the drugs have changed somewhat (bongs were aplenty in my time but pills not so much...smack was the drug of choice for my generation of canberrasdissaffectedyouthculture) but the story rings true. It's a real life account of suburbia. It's being called a modern Puberty Blues, but seeing as I haven't read Puberty Blues (which reminds me, I really should read Puberty Blues), I saw it as more of a modern, Australian (Canberran!) Catcher in the Rye. It brought back a lot of forgotten angst, frustration and general pissed offness that I'm grateful to have left behind. The book has copped some criticism for some of the slang used but this surprises me because I felt that it added to the authenticity of the novel: sure I don't/didn't use all of the words, but don't all teenage groups have their own vernacular (I cringe remembering a letter I wrote to my dad that was so full of "buzz words" that he needed help deciphering it)? If I had any criticism it might be that Jez is a bit too cool without trying...um and it bugged me because I wasn't, and nobody I know was, cool without trying. We ALL tried ALL of the time. I also felt like maybe some of the characters were a little cliched...but then again, it's quite hard to distance yourself from something you feel very close to and that's what's happening here: I'm picking holes because it doesn't entirely fit my own experience which means...well it means that the book struck a chord with me. A well written page turner that sucks you in and leaves you thinkin. To put it in the appropriate vernacular; I read the shit out of this book and I'm left wanting more.
August 3, 2013
Fucking fantastic! could not put it down! So wonderful to read a good Aussie book.
June 10, 2013
Snake Bite, the new work from Canberra-based writer Christie Thompson, sounds like a gritty, maybe disturbing, urban Teenage Angst book. This book is strikingly good in its characterisation; and yet it is precisely that characterisation that causes its downfall.
Snake Bite is seen through the eyes of Jez (Jessica) a seventeen-year-old, bored, white trash kid living in the suburbs of Canberra. She has an alcoholic mum, and her best mate, Lukey, has an aggressive, violent brother and a particularly distant father. One day, in a piercing studio, enter Laura, a rather posh-seeming contemporary kid from Melbourne, who has lesbian mums. Her dad was Mr Sperm.
This entry of Laura, at the end of Jez’s Year 11 school year is the point at which Jez’s life seems to be thrown for six. Lukey thinks that Laura is pretty good, which upsets Jez – who has feelings for Luke that she’d been trying to deny herself. Or maybe that she hadn’t realised, given they’d been friends since the age of thirteen. Jez’s next-door neighbour is Casey, an 18-year-old stripper, a girl who finds her confidence through sex, and can’t see that she is really just a slut.
Throughout the book, Jez battles her feelings for Lukey, realised only through his interest in Laura; she battles her sense of friendship, and tries to establish for herself what meaningful friendships actually are; she begins her sexual journey, prodded along by Laura’s sexual confidence (despite her pudginess), Luke’s burgeoning sexual interest in Laura, and Casey’s prominent and pronounced (and pushy!) sexuality.
At this point in her life, Jez is evaluating where she is, where she wants to be, and is trying to deal with her mum: an alcoholic 33-year-old, who is trying to recapture her youth, trying to recapture her own sense of self, and trying at the same time to maintain a job, be a mum to a girl who has high expectations of what “mum” should be, and who is trying to have her own life, her own romances, her own sexuality.
Jez’s mum (and the women with whom mum interacts) is painted as a spectacular failure, which is a hallmark of how Jez herself sees her mum. Reading this book I felt age twinges. I’m thirty-three, the same age as Jez’s mum. Lots of my friends have kids, lots of my friends hold down shitty jobs, and get massively drunk on the weekends. I’m a metal-head, it’s the culture… but what does that say about me and my social circle? Hm.
Surprisingly, I got into this book. However, it took me a long time to lose myself in it. By “long time”, I’m talking three-quarters of the way into the book. Snake Bite got hold of me early on: I really wanted to keep reading it. In fact, I read it in two and a half sittings! Wow! But I wasn’t lost in Jez’s world until the pace started to pick itself up, and Thompson’s confidence in her characters grew strong enough to allow them to roam along without her. Until that point, I could see the author in the work, pushing them along.
And quite frankly, that sucks.
The other thing that distanced me from this book was the language. Am I really so old? Already? Am I so distanced from Da Yoof of Today that the language barrier was such a problem that I wasn’t reading it seamlessly until halfway through the book? And also, should Thompson be worried that the specificity of her contemporary tone will date the book within less than five years?
The answer to all the foregoing questions is a resounding Yes.
I see the abbreviation “OTT” and I think “Off The Topic”. Actually, it’s “Over The Top”, which I struggled to get to. Seriously. It stopped me reading. The blend of bogan Australiana and contemporary speak was a huge problem for me. It is such a problem that I became really frustrated.
Once I’d settled down and considered things a while, I was able to pinpoint the root of my frustrations. These are that the language feels painted on, it’s clearly not native to Thompson. That makes it feel condescending. The second is that the same, beautiful, urban realism can be created without such a density of contemporary language failures. The characters largely drive themselves, the struggles would be the same, it would just be less of a stumbling block for the reader.
That’s if your reader is a 33-year-old woman, or you want the book to have a greater longevity. I might appear to be being picky, but this book will age really quickly, and that bugs me heaps. Classic tales need a lifespan, which this book will be denied because of its language.
I’m concerned about the nature of Snake Bite’s longevity because I really like this book. It made me realise that nothing’s really changed since I was a teenager. Except, my version took place in a country town, everybody’s parents were still together (and pretty well off, at that!). None of us was from a dysfunctional, bogan family. Well, a couple were dysfunctional, but certainly not bogan.
We ran around at night in each other’s towns, smoking cones, having Deep & Meaningful conversations about life and the world, philosophising about things that affected us; we listened to metal, got smashed, and generally speaking went through nearly everything that is in this book.
Except, we were in the bush; pills weren’t a thing, hard drugs were looked down upon as being particularly bogan, and we had none of the sense of class gap that cities tend to create. We knew the bogans. There were tracts of them that had been moved out of Melbourne to our town, where there were even less jobs, and even fewer opportunities. We stayed the fuck away because they were violent: they’d stab each other, get into huge fights, smash things. Everyone in the town stayed away from the ghetto streets.
And so, that side of Jez’s life is alien to me. The side of her that yearns for love, and solid friendships, to know herself and her direction, whilst simultaneously striving for a better life – which is always somewhere else, somewhere away from home – is familiar to me. Jez’s alienation, and sense of a whole society of fuckups, is familiar to me. Perhaps there is not much difference between being a teenager of the 1990s and being a teenager of the 2010s? How has life not moved on in twenty years? How is it that this sense of isolated helplessness, in a society that couldn’t give two shits, is the same?
But while all of these things are familiar to me, so is the recapturing of what Home means, the rekindling of Jez’s relationship with her mother. The difference, is that it took me until I was nearly 30 to work this out. It’s the only thing that seems truly false to me (besides some of the painted-in language). How is Jez, at 17, so incredibly self-reflective, caring, able to learn from herself and the mistakes of others, and, ultimately, become so forgiving? In what, three months? She did all this in one summer?
Wow. I fell out with my family due to relationships, I was the odd-ball from when I was about 14, and I didn’t resolve a lot of my family dramas, or realise what Amazing Rocks they all are, until I had huge things go down in my late 20s. Does that make me a failure? Or just a slow learner? Neither; it makes Jez a little bit unrealistic. Or incredibly precocious, which, given her circumstances, is unlikely.
Either way, the resolution seemed to occur fairly quickly and easily, even though Jez went through pain to get there. Granted, things happened quickly, and so the resolution timeframes were fair enough.
Also, towards that resolution, this book moved me to tears. I will not tell you what happens, because then I would be The Critic That Spoiled The Book For Everyone Else. Suffice it to say, I had moist eyes.
It’s refreshing to read such quality Australian fiction. So many of the urban tales I’ve read in my life have been British, so it’s kind of odd to see the Aussie white trash written about in a similar style. The familiarity of it all makes it feel not at all exotic or driven into the mud; and therefore, it’s almost bland. The blandness is, however, a measure of the urban environment in which these kids were growing up, too. Canberra isn’t exactly known for being an exciting town.
Ultimately, Snake Bite is a good read. The topics and themes dealt with by the characters are universal themes, which is why the story works so well. If you’re in your teenaged years, please please go buy this book, read it, and let me know what you think. If you grew up in the ‘90s like I did, I’m betting that the grunger in you, or the metalhead in you, will identify fairly easily with the protagonist.
Oh, and the warnings about this book being full of drugs and sex and adult themes? Who cares, man. I didn’t notice it. It’s not gratuitous: it’s normal. Also, it maybe says more about me than these themes say about the writer, the story, or the characters. Those grown-ups who believe that children aren’t smoking, popping pingers, smoking weed, and getting drunk when out of parental sight, need to take a big dose of Reality. If you’re offended by it, just don’t bother. Put your blinkers back on and go to church instead.
Snake Bite is seen through the eyes of Jez (Jessica) a seventeen-year-old, bored, white trash kid living in the suburbs of Canberra. She has an alcoholic mum, and her best mate, Lukey, has an aggressive, violent brother and a particularly distant father. One day, in a piercing studio, enter Laura, a rather posh-seeming contemporary kid from Melbourne, who has lesbian mums. Her dad was Mr Sperm.
This entry of Laura, at the end of Jez’s Year 11 school year is the point at which Jez’s life seems to be thrown for six. Lukey thinks that Laura is pretty good, which upsets Jez – who has feelings for Luke that she’d been trying to deny herself. Or maybe that she hadn’t realised, given they’d been friends since the age of thirteen. Jez’s next-door neighbour is Casey, an 18-year-old stripper, a girl who finds her confidence through sex, and can’t see that she is really just a slut.
Throughout the book, Jez battles her feelings for Lukey, realised only through his interest in Laura; she battles her sense of friendship, and tries to establish for herself what meaningful friendships actually are; she begins her sexual journey, prodded along by Laura’s sexual confidence (despite her pudginess), Luke’s burgeoning sexual interest in Laura, and Casey’s prominent and pronounced (and pushy!) sexuality.
At this point in her life, Jez is evaluating where she is, where she wants to be, and is trying to deal with her mum: an alcoholic 33-year-old, who is trying to recapture her youth, trying to recapture her own sense of self, and trying at the same time to maintain a job, be a mum to a girl who has high expectations of what “mum” should be, and who is trying to have her own life, her own romances, her own sexuality.
Jez’s mum (and the women with whom mum interacts) is painted as a spectacular failure, which is a hallmark of how Jez herself sees her mum. Reading this book I felt age twinges. I’m thirty-three, the same age as Jez’s mum. Lots of my friends have kids, lots of my friends hold down shitty jobs, and get massively drunk on the weekends. I’m a metal-head, it’s the culture… but what does that say about me and my social circle? Hm.
Surprisingly, I got into this book. However, it took me a long time to lose myself in it. By “long time”, I’m talking three-quarters of the way into the book. Snake Bite got hold of me early on: I really wanted to keep reading it. In fact, I read it in two and a half sittings! Wow! But I wasn’t lost in Jez’s world until the pace started to pick itself up, and Thompson’s confidence in her characters grew strong enough to allow them to roam along without her. Until that point, I could see the author in the work, pushing them along.
And quite frankly, that sucks.
The other thing that distanced me from this book was the language. Am I really so old? Already? Am I so distanced from Da Yoof of Today that the language barrier was such a problem that I wasn’t reading it seamlessly until halfway through the book? And also, should Thompson be worried that the specificity of her contemporary tone will date the book within less than five years?
The answer to all the foregoing questions is a resounding Yes.
I see the abbreviation “OTT” and I think “Off The Topic”. Actually, it’s “Over The Top”, which I struggled to get to. Seriously. It stopped me reading. The blend of bogan Australiana and contemporary speak was a huge problem for me. It is such a problem that I became really frustrated.
Once I’d settled down and considered things a while, I was able to pinpoint the root of my frustrations. These are that the language feels painted on, it’s clearly not native to Thompson. That makes it feel condescending. The second is that the same, beautiful, urban realism can be created without such a density of contemporary language failures. The characters largely drive themselves, the struggles would be the same, it would just be less of a stumbling block for the reader.
That’s if your reader is a 33-year-old woman, or you want the book to have a greater longevity. I might appear to be being picky, but this book will age really quickly, and that bugs me heaps. Classic tales need a lifespan, which this book will be denied because of its language.
I’m concerned about the nature of Snake Bite’s longevity because I really like this book. It made me realise that nothing’s really changed since I was a teenager. Except, my version took place in a country town, everybody’s parents were still together (and pretty well off, at that!). None of us was from a dysfunctional, bogan family. Well, a couple were dysfunctional, but certainly not bogan.
We ran around at night in each other’s towns, smoking cones, having Deep & Meaningful conversations about life and the world, philosophising about things that affected us; we listened to metal, got smashed, and generally speaking went through nearly everything that is in this book.
Except, we were in the bush; pills weren’t a thing, hard drugs were looked down upon as being particularly bogan, and we had none of the sense of class gap that cities tend to create. We knew the bogans. There were tracts of them that had been moved out of Melbourne to our town, where there were even less jobs, and even fewer opportunities. We stayed the fuck away because they were violent: they’d stab each other, get into huge fights, smash things. Everyone in the town stayed away from the ghetto streets.
And so, that side of Jez’s life is alien to me. The side of her that yearns for love, and solid friendships, to know herself and her direction, whilst simultaneously striving for a better life – which is always somewhere else, somewhere away from home – is familiar to me. Jez’s alienation, and sense of a whole society of fuckups, is familiar to me. Perhaps there is not much difference between being a teenager of the 1990s and being a teenager of the 2010s? How has life not moved on in twenty years? How is it that this sense of isolated helplessness, in a society that couldn’t give two shits, is the same?
But while all of these things are familiar to me, so is the recapturing of what Home means, the rekindling of Jez’s relationship with her mother. The difference, is that it took me until I was nearly 30 to work this out. It’s the only thing that seems truly false to me (besides some of the painted-in language). How is Jez, at 17, so incredibly self-reflective, caring, able to learn from herself and the mistakes of others, and, ultimately, become so forgiving? In what, three months? She did all this in one summer?
Wow. I fell out with my family due to relationships, I was the odd-ball from when I was about 14, and I didn’t resolve a lot of my family dramas, or realise what Amazing Rocks they all are, until I had huge things go down in my late 20s. Does that make me a failure? Or just a slow learner? Neither; it makes Jez a little bit unrealistic. Or incredibly precocious, which, given her circumstances, is unlikely.
Either way, the resolution seemed to occur fairly quickly and easily, even though Jez went through pain to get there. Granted, things happened quickly, and so the resolution timeframes were fair enough.
Also, towards that resolution, this book moved me to tears. I will not tell you what happens, because then I would be The Critic That Spoiled The Book For Everyone Else. Suffice it to say, I had moist eyes.
It’s refreshing to read such quality Australian fiction. So many of the urban tales I’ve read in my life have been British, so it’s kind of odd to see the Aussie white trash written about in a similar style. The familiarity of it all makes it feel not at all exotic or driven into the mud; and therefore, it’s almost bland. The blandness is, however, a measure of the urban environment in which these kids were growing up, too. Canberra isn’t exactly known for being an exciting town.
Ultimately, Snake Bite is a good read. The topics and themes dealt with by the characters are universal themes, which is why the story works so well. If you’re in your teenaged years, please please go buy this book, read it, and let me know what you think. If you grew up in the ‘90s like I did, I’m betting that the grunger in you, or the metalhead in you, will identify fairly easily with the protagonist.
Oh, and the warnings about this book being full of drugs and sex and adult themes? Who cares, man. I didn’t notice it. It’s not gratuitous: it’s normal. Also, it maybe says more about me than these themes say about the writer, the story, or the characters. Those grown-ups who believe that children aren’t smoking, popping pingers, smoking weed, and getting drunk when out of parental sight, need to take a big dose of Reality. If you’re offended by it, just don’t bother. Put your blinkers back on and go to church instead.
August 26, 2013
‘I drank because I was young and dumb and bored and wanted a laugh with my mates. I took pills because it made me happy.’
Jez is a seventeen year old teenager, living in Canberra’s Tuggeranong Valley with her alcoholic single mum Helen. Jez is sort of celebrating the end of year 11 with another body piercing, but she’s bored and in the absence of money or prospects there isn’t much to look forward to.
Jez is hanging out with her friend Lukey, but when Laura from Melbourne moves into the neighbourhood Lukey seems to prefer Laura’s company. This naturally adds to Jez’s angst and she ends up spending time with her next door neighbour, Casey. Casey has way more experience than Jez and is utterly self-absorbed. Casey’s not really the best of influences, but she has a very attractive older brother and two parents. A family, in other words, no matter how dysfunctional. Jez has Helen, but Helen is an embarrassment to Jez.
This is the story of Jez’s summer: of parties, drugs, and sometimes of the consequences of choice. It’s also a story about teenagers and adults making the best of tough situations and circumstances. It’s a side of Canberra that people outside don’t often encounter or think about – but they’d recognise it instantly in the outer suburbs of other cities. We’ve all seen alienated teenagers, and some of us may recognise younger generations of ourselves. The drugs of choice, the tribal identities and costumes may have changed but developed-world teenage angst has its recognisable forms. Of course, not all teenagers are like Jez and her friends: some can see a hopeful place in the future for themselves. But not Jez.
‘That really got me thinking – a lot of that femi-nazi shit is fine for chicks smart enough to go to university and get proper jobs. And then those smart women with good jobs whinge about how men get all the better paying jobs or whatever. What are the rest of us supposed to do? I wondered.’
It’s a confronting novel in many ways: those of us who’ve survived our own teenage angst will know that we didn’t all make it through and may regret some choices made along the way. And role models are so important. But if you’ve been there, then it’s hard not to relate to the despair and loneliness of perceived difference and disadvantage, of wanting to belong.
If you can get into the contemporary codes, language and style of Jez and her peers, and acknowledge the good and bad of the different parenting modes described, it’s possible to see some hope for the future. Can Jez (and others) move beyond a passive acceptance of bad luck and poor management? Can they make a better future for themselves? Perhaps. Maybe. Have teenagers changed much in the past 40 years? Hmm.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Jez is a seventeen year old teenager, living in Canberra’s Tuggeranong Valley with her alcoholic single mum Helen. Jez is sort of celebrating the end of year 11 with another body piercing, but she’s bored and in the absence of money or prospects there isn’t much to look forward to.
Jez is hanging out with her friend Lukey, but when Laura from Melbourne moves into the neighbourhood Lukey seems to prefer Laura’s company. This naturally adds to Jez’s angst and she ends up spending time with her next door neighbour, Casey. Casey has way more experience than Jez and is utterly self-absorbed. Casey’s not really the best of influences, but she has a very attractive older brother and two parents. A family, in other words, no matter how dysfunctional. Jez has Helen, but Helen is an embarrassment to Jez.
This is the story of Jez’s summer: of parties, drugs, and sometimes of the consequences of choice. It’s also a story about teenagers and adults making the best of tough situations and circumstances. It’s a side of Canberra that people outside don’t often encounter or think about – but they’d recognise it instantly in the outer suburbs of other cities. We’ve all seen alienated teenagers, and some of us may recognise younger generations of ourselves. The drugs of choice, the tribal identities and costumes may have changed but developed-world teenage angst has its recognisable forms. Of course, not all teenagers are like Jez and her friends: some can see a hopeful place in the future for themselves. But not Jez.
‘That really got me thinking – a lot of that femi-nazi shit is fine for chicks smart enough to go to university and get proper jobs. And then those smart women with good jobs whinge about how men get all the better paying jobs or whatever. What are the rest of us supposed to do? I wondered.’
It’s a confronting novel in many ways: those of us who’ve survived our own teenage angst will know that we didn’t all make it through and may regret some choices made along the way. And role models are so important. But if you’ve been there, then it’s hard not to relate to the despair and loneliness of perceived difference and disadvantage, of wanting to belong.
If you can get into the contemporary codes, language and style of Jez and her peers, and acknowledge the good and bad of the different parenting modes described, it’s possible to see some hope for the future. Can Jez (and others) move beyond a passive acceptance of bad luck and poor management? Can they make a better future for themselves? Perhaps. Maybe. Have teenagers changed much in the past 40 years? Hmm.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
July 11, 2013
I was given this book to review prior to its official release date in August 2013.
Snake bite is the Pubety Blues of the 21st Century. Set in Canberra I found some of the language in the book foreign, certainly not what kids of that age use here in Queensland (and yes I checked) they didn’t have a clue so I can only guess some was "Canberra specific". None of us had heard the word Vom or Maggot used in that way.
Apart from those small issues the book was well written and easy to read. A very interesting insight into the 17 year old Jez, her friends and peer group. I am sure that a lot of teenagers will identify with her and her story in one form or another.
Definately a good read for parents of teenagers and I am planning to pass my copy along to a few who are very eager to read it.
I would not be surprised to see this as one of the next Australian movies gracing our screen in the near future, Christie Thompson did a great job with Snake Bite, it’s destined for big things.
Snake bite is the Pubety Blues of the 21st Century. Set in Canberra I found some of the language in the book foreign, certainly not what kids of that age use here in Queensland (and yes I checked) they didn’t have a clue so I can only guess some was "Canberra specific". None of us had heard the word Vom or Maggot used in that way.
Apart from those small issues the book was well written and easy to read. A very interesting insight into the 17 year old Jez, her friends and peer group. I am sure that a lot of teenagers will identify with her and her story in one form or another.
Definately a good read for parents of teenagers and I am planning to pass my copy along to a few who are very eager to read it.
I would not be surprised to see this as one of the next Australian movies gracing our screen in the near future, Christie Thompson did a great job with Snake Bite, it’s destined for big things.
December 16, 2013
I spent a few years living in Canberra and, despite its many quiet charms, I have to admit I was glad I didn't grow up there - and I was very glad I rarely spent any time in Kambah. And Kambah is where 17-year-old Jez lives.
Snake Bite captures an adolescence I'm also glad I didn't have, all drugs and alcohol and crappy "bogan" lives. For all Jez's "getting maggot" with mates and acquaintances, her insights and clarity of thought on capitalism and real life vs "telly land" are excellent and kept me interested and intrigued while turning the pages to see how things would end up with her and Lukey, Melburnian newcomer Laura and scary neighbour Casey.
I read this hot on the heels of Tsiolkas's extraordinary Barracuda, and initially I wondered whether I was the right audience for the book - is it YA? - and felt I couldn't quite get into it; then I got swept along, stopped wondering and enjoyed the ride: and it was great.
Snake Bite captures an adolescence I'm also glad I didn't have, all drugs and alcohol and crappy "bogan" lives. For all Jez's "getting maggot" with mates and acquaintances, her insights and clarity of thought on capitalism and real life vs "telly land" are excellent and kept me interested and intrigued while turning the pages to see how things would end up with her and Lukey, Melburnian newcomer Laura and scary neighbour Casey.
I read this hot on the heels of Tsiolkas's extraordinary Barracuda, and initially I wondered whether I was the right audience for the book - is it YA? - and felt I couldn't quite get into it; then I got swept along, stopped wondering and enjoyed the ride: and it was great.
August 9, 2013
An amazing story cleverly written to keep you reading non-stop until you finish it. Then you feel compelled to read it again, and again to see what you missed. I can't wait for the movie to come out to bring to life the characters, in particular Jez and Lukey. This story will appeal to a wide range of people as most can relate this to their own teenage experience, wherever in the world they grew up.
September 20, 2013
Christie Thompson’s Snake Bite (Allen and Unwin) pulled me forward, through a smoke-filled, booze fuelled suburban landscape towards, with equal likelihood, oblivion or redemption.
Read my full review here: http://blog.thatbookyoulike.com.au/wi...
Read my full review here: http://blog.thatbookyoulike.com.au/wi...
August 8, 2013
this book was amazing, it kept me glued to its pages from start to finish. I instantly fell in love with the story line and the characters and by the end of it I found myself wanting more.
August 20, 2013
Loved it! I couldn't put it down. Bring on the next book Christie.
August 26, 2013
A great book! I finished it over a weekend as I couldn't put the book down.
June 6, 2019
It’s nice to read a book based on the town you’re from. It helps to create the scene a lot easier and relate to the characters!! I enjoyed this book.
June 7, 2023
This is like an angsty, bogan, puberty blues haha. It was an entertaining read though
July 14, 2013
My View:
An engaging read once you have discovered the secret to decoding the teenagers’ language of text shortcuts, abbreviations and contemporary jargon. This is a fast moving book full of angst, despair, loneliness and the universal themes of all teenagers in the first world - those of seeking acceptance and love.
The reality is not a lot has changed in the last forty years or so for young people; teenagers are still ‘misunderstood’, still seeking answers to the meaning of life and still searching for acceptance; still trying to define themselves by their clothes, their music, their “style” and their choice of friends. Young women are still confusing sex with love. Not a lot has changed since I was a teenager.
The language of youth may have changed, the drug of choice may have changed (alcohol is an option where once was the only choice for most, now dope/weed and other chemical highs are more in favour and easy to acquire, apparently). It seems we have still not managed to teach our children how to communicate their feelings and deal with their emotions – young people are still trying to bury their angst and loneliness in the numbness of drug use. It is a sad indictment of modern life.
An engaging read, sometimes funny, mostly sad. The characters I found were a little stereotyped and for me Jez was the only empathetic voice. I did not understand how with the massive amount of drug and alcohol use and abuse in this narrative that apparently no adult had a single clue what was going on; for me this aspect of the narrative spoilt the credibility of the story, and the fact that all issues were neatly and simply wrapped up in the conclusion - Jez was enlightened to the “ways of the world” and appeared mature beyond her years, and “happy families” prevailed in the end, was a little too convenient.
However, a quick mostly enjoyable if not sometimes confronting read that every parent should read. This book can be used as great conversation starter for adults with teenagers. And I should add - I know that I was not the target audience for this book – I am several generations too old for and most likely was seeking more than what the book was offering as YA reading. :) Young adults will enjoy.
An engaging read once you have discovered the secret to decoding the teenagers’ language of text shortcuts, abbreviations and contemporary jargon. This is a fast moving book full of angst, despair, loneliness and the universal themes of all teenagers in the first world - those of seeking acceptance and love.
The reality is not a lot has changed in the last forty years or so for young people; teenagers are still ‘misunderstood’, still seeking answers to the meaning of life and still searching for acceptance; still trying to define themselves by their clothes, their music, their “style” and their choice of friends. Young women are still confusing sex with love. Not a lot has changed since I was a teenager.
The language of youth may have changed, the drug of choice may have changed (alcohol is an option where once was the only choice for most, now dope/weed and other chemical highs are more in favour and easy to acquire, apparently). It seems we have still not managed to teach our children how to communicate their feelings and deal with their emotions – young people are still trying to bury their angst and loneliness in the numbness of drug use. It is a sad indictment of modern life.
An engaging read, sometimes funny, mostly sad. The characters I found were a little stereotyped and for me Jez was the only empathetic voice. I did not understand how with the massive amount of drug and alcohol use and abuse in this narrative that apparently no adult had a single clue what was going on; for me this aspect of the narrative spoilt the credibility of the story, and the fact that all issues were neatly and simply wrapped up in the conclusion - Jez was enlightened to the “ways of the world” and appeared mature beyond her years, and “happy families” prevailed in the end, was a little too convenient.
However, a quick mostly enjoyable if not sometimes confronting read that every parent should read. This book can be used as great conversation starter for adults with teenagers. And I should add - I know that I was not the target audience for this book – I am several generations too old for and most likely was seeking more than what the book was offering as YA reading. :) Young adults will enjoy.
August 26, 2016
First of all just pick this book up and read it. Do not read the blurb at the back, do not get bothered about what genre it fits into, just read it. Why? Thompson has captured a slice of Australia life that is unique and beautifully but brutally revealed on the page. This is a warts and all story, that is fresh and vivid.
Jessica (Jez) is 17, closing in on 18 and has finished school for the year. She is stuck in the Canberra suburb of Kambah and life truly does suck. Her mother is an alcoholic, it is a stinking hot summer and there is nothing to do but take drugs, drink and screw. In this chaos of boredom Jez tries to find some meaning to her life. Should she stay in Kambah or move to Melbourne, should she hook up with Lukey or remain friends. Then there is how to deal with being eternally embarrassed by having a fat mother. It is not an easy world that Jez has to navigate.
There are characters such as Casey and Shaz and it is hard to believe they are real characters but they do exist. Thompson has skilfully crafted an engaging set of characters that lift off the page and are perfectly flawed. It would be easy just to make some of the characters clichés but I really was impressed how Thompson steered clear of that. As repulsive as Shaz is the argument between her and Jez have late in the story is a revelation about Shaz’s fears and self-loathing.
The slang, language and tone of the book is wonderful. Thompson captures the world that Jez and her contemporaries live in with amazing accuracy. The language grabs you from the outset and you are easily brought into the world. That takes a great skill and I never felt at any time that I needed a dictionary on Bogans to understand what was being said or implied.
This is a cracking first novel as what Thompson creates is a world of little hope, little possibility of advancement and a resigned expectation that this is all there is. As the story unfolds and the different influences move through Jez and her mother’s life you are given the opportunity to see that just maybe they can both rise out of a dead end.
Jessica (Jez) is 17, closing in on 18 and has finished school for the year. She is stuck in the Canberra suburb of Kambah and life truly does suck. Her mother is an alcoholic, it is a stinking hot summer and there is nothing to do but take drugs, drink and screw. In this chaos of boredom Jez tries to find some meaning to her life. Should she stay in Kambah or move to Melbourne, should she hook up with Lukey or remain friends. Then there is how to deal with being eternally embarrassed by having a fat mother. It is not an easy world that Jez has to navigate.
There are characters such as Casey and Shaz and it is hard to believe they are real characters but they do exist. Thompson has skilfully crafted an engaging set of characters that lift off the page and are perfectly flawed. It would be easy just to make some of the characters clichés but I really was impressed how Thompson steered clear of that. As repulsive as Shaz is the argument between her and Jez have late in the story is a revelation about Shaz’s fears and self-loathing.
The slang, language and tone of the book is wonderful. Thompson captures the world that Jez and her contemporaries live in with amazing accuracy. The language grabs you from the outset and you are easily brought into the world. That takes a great skill and I never felt at any time that I needed a dictionary on Bogans to understand what was being said or implied.
This is a cracking first novel as what Thompson creates is a world of little hope, little possibility of advancement and a resigned expectation that this is all there is. As the story unfolds and the different influences move through Jez and her mother’s life you are given the opportunity to see that just maybe they can both rise out of a dead end.
May 22, 2016
This book is amazing!
I picked this book up at the shops because its bold and confident cover demanded my attention. The cover of the book reflects and serves as a teaser for what is to expect from the book itself: a bold, confident and authentic piece of literature.
Reading the synopsis on the back I definitely knew I would like this book. It is about Jez, a seventeen year old, who is living with her alcoholic mother in suburbia Canberra. She has just finished school and is ready to have fun with her best friend Lukey until a girl rocks up and catches Lukey's attention, resulting in Jez hanging out with her neighbour, Casey, who is wild teenager experienced in everything. It is a coming of age book about a protagonist girl which definitely reminds me of Looking for Alibrandi which I read in middle school.
The book captures the essence of being a misunderstood teenage having all that angst and anger towards the world. I related to the book in many ways just as much as I didn't. A book about living in suburbia Australia as a teenager?: check (I am still in high school and although I've only been to Canberra for a school trip suburban life in Australia have a lot in common throughout. A book that deals with the anxiety and peer pressure deriving from social groups?: check. A book focused on teenagers being wild and getting wasted everyday?: che-not so much. I have literally never touched alcohol in my life and I've only slept over at a friends house a couple of times. I'm that kid that wonders 'what are they doing with their lives? Shouldn't they be at school, not going to parties getting wasted and high?'
Like I said I related to this book just as much as I didn't with the alcohol and drugs. But reading this it gave me a new perspective. The book is so authentic in how having an unstable environment at home can lead kids following in their parents' footsteps.
Read this book if you want an authentic story full of dark humour and relatable teenage problems that sucks you in so deep it will leave you wanting more.
I picked this book up at the shops because its bold and confident cover demanded my attention. The cover of the book reflects and serves as a teaser for what is to expect from the book itself: a bold, confident and authentic piece of literature.
Reading the synopsis on the back I definitely knew I would like this book. It is about Jez, a seventeen year old, who is living with her alcoholic mother in suburbia Canberra. She has just finished school and is ready to have fun with her best friend Lukey until a girl rocks up and catches Lukey's attention, resulting in Jez hanging out with her neighbour, Casey, who is wild teenager experienced in everything. It is a coming of age book about a protagonist girl which definitely reminds me of Looking for Alibrandi which I read in middle school.
The book captures the essence of being a misunderstood teenage having all that angst and anger towards the world. I related to the book in many ways just as much as I didn't. A book about living in suburbia Australia as a teenager?: check (I am still in high school and although I've only been to Canberra for a school trip suburban life in Australia have a lot in common throughout. A book that deals with the anxiety and peer pressure deriving from social groups?: check. A book focused on teenagers being wild and getting wasted everyday?: che-not so much. I have literally never touched alcohol in my life and I've only slept over at a friends house a couple of times. I'm that kid that wonders 'what are they doing with their lives? Shouldn't they be at school, not going to parties getting wasted and high?'
Like I said I related to this book just as much as I didn't with the alcohol and drugs. But reading this it gave me a new perspective. The book is so authentic in how having an unstable environment at home can lead kids following in their parents' footsteps.
Read this book if you want an authentic story full of dark humour and relatable teenage problems that sucks you in so deep it will leave you wanting more.
July 15, 2013
The character Marge, in Hannie Rayson's 1990 play Hotel Sorrento, describes the effect Helen Garner's Monkey Grip had on her at first reading. "I remember reading Monkey Grip and thinking, 'This is the place where I live and I've never seen it like this before'. It was as though she'd given me the summer in the inner suburbs. Like it hadn't existed until I read her book. And all of a sudden, everything became meaningful - going down to the Fitzroy pool - Aqua Profunda - and walking to the shop on one of those hot evenings and smelling the asphalt. Watching those young women in their cotton dresses riding their bicycles through the park. She gave it to me. She gave it life." I can well imagine the youth of "the [Tuggeranong] Valley," present and to some extent past, having the same response to this novel.
You don't have to have grown up in Canberra to appreciate the novel however. I didn't, and my adolescence was about as far removed from the drug- and alcohol-fuelled ones of Snake Bite as it's possible to be. But there are sufficiently numerous "universal" characteristics to it in its depiction of a 17-year-old girl growing up and discovering what she wants out of her life and what true friendship and love is, replete with all the usual painfulness of adolescence, to garner widespread appeal. And it won't necessarily just appeal to girls (or women who remember having been girls) either; among many intertextual echoes that the novel brought back to me was the poignant awkwardness of Noah Taylor's Danny in John Duigan's 1987 film The Year My Voice Broke. Some of the moments towards the end of Snake Bite are equally as gut-wrenching as those towards the end of Duigan's film as Jez, the now 18-year-old heroine of the novel, hovers in the balance between what she wants to say goodbye to and the potentially greater hopefulness of her future.
You don't have to have grown up in Canberra to appreciate the novel however. I didn't, and my adolescence was about as far removed from the drug- and alcohol-fuelled ones of Snake Bite as it's possible to be. But there are sufficiently numerous "universal" characteristics to it in its depiction of a 17-year-old girl growing up and discovering what she wants out of her life and what true friendship and love is, replete with all the usual painfulness of adolescence, to garner widespread appeal. And it won't necessarily just appeal to girls (or women who remember having been girls) either; among many intertextual echoes that the novel brought back to me was the poignant awkwardness of Noah Taylor's Danny in John Duigan's 1987 film The Year My Voice Broke. Some of the moments towards the end of Snake Bite are equally as gut-wrenching as those towards the end of Duigan's film as Jez, the now 18-year-old heroine of the novel, hovers in the balance between what she wants to say goodbye to and the potentially greater hopefulness of her future.
July 16, 2013
It is summer 2009 in the Canberra suburbs and Jez is a bored seventeen-year-old girl who lives with her thirty-three-year-old alcoholic mum in a government house (govvie) next door to some 'cashed up bogans' and hangs out with her best friend, drug dealer and fellow emo, Lukey Johnson. Waiting at Kimbo's Body Piercing to get a snake bite, Jez and Lukey meet Laura, a hipster recently moved from Melbourne. Laura's interest in Lukey grates Jez, who is struggling to understand her with new feelings for her best mate. When Lukey and Laura begin to spend more time together, Jez hangs out with her neighbours, slutty part-time stripper Casey Holland and her brother Cash.
Casey is a fairly unlikeable character, but is indirectly responsible for one of my favourite scenes in the book: 'Casey had been someone to play Barbie dolls with in primary school (Casey used to make Ken sexually assault Barbie and then the other dolls would be crime scene investigators)'.
Jez fills her summer with alcohol, drugs, hangovers, parties, video games, swimming, daytime television, navel gazing and requisite teenage angst. Parents are embarrassing, relationships are confusing and black jeans are hot and sticky on a summer day. Snake Bite is the story of Jez's summer and the changes it brings.
I really like this book. I like it despite the fact it makes me feel old. I like it even though I had to check urban dictionary.com for the meaning of a couple of words ('scrams', anyone?). The humour is dark, but very funny. Surprisingly, people still have West Coast Coolers in their fridge. Unfortunately I think the pop culture references will date this book very quickly, which will be a shame because it's a great story.
Casey is a fairly unlikeable character, but is indirectly responsible for one of my favourite scenes in the book: 'Casey had been someone to play Barbie dolls with in primary school (Casey used to make Ken sexually assault Barbie and then the other dolls would be crime scene investigators)'.
Jez fills her summer with alcohol, drugs, hangovers, parties, video games, swimming, daytime television, navel gazing and requisite teenage angst. Parents are embarrassing, relationships are confusing and black jeans are hot and sticky on a summer day. Snake Bite is the story of Jez's summer and the changes it brings.
I really like this book. I like it despite the fact it makes me feel old. I like it even though I had to check urban dictionary.com for the meaning of a couple of words ('scrams', anyone?). The humour is dark, but very funny. Surprisingly, people still have West Coast Coolers in their fridge. Unfortunately I think the pop culture references will date this book very quickly, which will be a shame because it's a great story.
October 15, 2013
Oh, to be seventeen again! Snake Bite brings to life such powerful ‘real’ characters depicting the timeless yet contemporary issues teenagers endeavour to overcome. The voice of Jez is colourful with honest humour that had me in stitches of laugher one moment, then the next empathising with her dilemmas as beneath the surface, her insecurities, hopes and dreams are revealed. I found Jez’s relationship with her young mother deeply moving, almost as if their lives are playing out in mirror images. Her mother struggles to hold onto her own dreams, while indulging in escapism through her heavy drinking, with aspects of her own persona so easy to relate to, having been a teenager in the nineties (a few laughs there as well…) Snake Bite captures the reality of ‘how it is’ through Jez’s ‘mad’ times shared with her peers, Lukey, Laura and Casey, who each have a strong part to play as Jez embarks on her journey of self discovery over the hot summer of 2009. The connection between Jez and Lukey is both captivating and bittersweet, while Jez’s growing feelings for him allude to a vulnerability they have in common, as Lukey struggles with his own dysfunctional family life. A thumbs up all around for this read, I hope it finds its way into the hands of many teenagers and adults alike, it is truly an eye-opener not only of ‘how it is’ but with entertaining narratives that keeps the pages turning all night.
April 29, 2016
As new resident of Canberra, this book jumped out at me at the University of Canberra library. I had to take it out and read it immediately.
It's a good, fun, quick read. It's a young adult novel, but many of its themes are very adult: drug abuse, alcoholism, sex, fitting in, social security etc.
This book shows the seedier side of the Australian capital. In the outer suburbs, it could be any outer suburb or small country town in this country. The high school students are only interested in hooking up, taking drugs and drinking too much, in addition to body modification. The characters seem to have lived beyond their years.
I like the way the writer doesn't disclose the gender of the protagonist for several chapters: another reason to avoid reading the blurb on the back.
The story also inspired me to visit Tuggeranong Hyperdome last week and I now appreciate the steel sheep of Kambah.
Like just about every book to come out of Australia, it is grim and depressing. A side our dear leaders choose to ignore. It took me back to my own adolescence and made me glad to have survived and turned into something of a well adjusted adult, because as this book hints at, some folks peak as teenagers.
It's a good, fun, quick read. It's a young adult novel, but many of its themes are very adult: drug abuse, alcoholism, sex, fitting in, social security etc.
This book shows the seedier side of the Australian capital. In the outer suburbs, it could be any outer suburb or small country town in this country. The high school students are only interested in hooking up, taking drugs and drinking too much, in addition to body modification. The characters seem to have lived beyond their years.
I like the way the writer doesn't disclose the gender of the protagonist for several chapters: another reason to avoid reading the blurb on the back.
The story also inspired me to visit Tuggeranong Hyperdome last week and I now appreciate the steel sheep of Kambah.
Like just about every book to come out of Australia, it is grim and depressing. A side our dear leaders choose to ignore. It took me back to my own adolescence and made me glad to have survived and turned into something of a well adjusted adult, because as this book hints at, some folks peak as teenagers.
December 17, 2013
I smashed this out in one night, it was a really easy and engrossing read. There were things I loved about this book and things that I felt kind of ehhhhh... about. I found myself rolling my eyes occasionally at the overuse of slang, I honestly don't know anyone who talkes like that in real life, it's good in the sense that it's definitely aussie but then in another sense that it's trying so damn hard to be identifiable. That being said I could definitely pick out the characters as people I knew in my teens. I'm still on the fence about Jez, there's definitely an element of unlikability about her. She's a hypocrite, willfully ignorant, though in retrospect I'm probably expecting too much from a someone whose only seventeen, but it's her flaws and that of all the other characters that make them real... though a lot of them have very little to redeem those flaws. There's elements of my own teen years scattered throughout this book. I guess that's one of the things I liked about it so much. My only other gripe was the ending. And Jez's tattoo. Really? Really?
January 25, 2016
I had to keep reminding myself that this was YA fiction- the initial piercings, emo, smokes, pingers, teenager angst, etc. bundled together in the first 5 pages seemed formulaic. As I read further, it became clear that this was a target audience with the aim to engage. The dialogue seemed contrived at times with the intent to use colloquialisms rather than relay and communication. The story line seems too generic. Puberty Blues of our time- perhaps but that wave has been ridden.
October 28, 2013
Loved this book - ripped through it in a weekend. Jez's dramas felt very real, honest, a paint-stripped view of life in the capital city which rings true for many young people struggling to survive less-than-ok parenting and find a way forward in the midst of gritty urban influences. Thompson's writing is spare, incisive and often funny. Treat yourself.
August 7, 2013
Very grateful for my firstreads copy.
This novel is a pleasantly surprising read. It is engaging, fast paced and set in a gritty version of Canberra.
Snake Bite artfully deals with a vast array of emotions, atypical to the tumultuous teenage life. Great to find an enjoyable Aussie read.
This novel is a pleasantly surprising read. It is engaging, fast paced and set in a gritty version of Canberra.
Snake Bite artfully deals with a vast array of emotions, atypical to the tumultuous teenage life. Great to find an enjoyable Aussie read.
August 18, 2013
An amazing debut by an amazing up and coming author.
If you grew up in Canberra (and even if you didn't) this book is a definite must read.
Witty, hilarious and moving - I highly recommend getting bitten :)
If you grew up in Canberra (and even if you didn't) this book is a definite must read.
Witty, hilarious and moving - I highly recommend getting bitten :)
September 5, 2014
Great book but let down by the ending. I expected more given the book captures the reader forcing them to forge through, only to be let down by they dismal "they lived happily ever after" type ending. So disappointing.
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