Remember Me, Jimmy James

by Steven Carroll

Novel spanning the period WWII to the 1980s, set in Melbourne and Tweed Heads.

Young Jimmy James buries a significant secret and it takes three generations of his family to break the cycle of secrecy he initiated. This is the author's first novel.

285 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 1992

About the author

Steven Carroll is an Australian novelist. He was born in 1949 in Melbourne, Victoria and studied at La Trobe University. He has taught English at secondary school level, and drama at RMIT. He has been Drama Critic for The Sunday Age newspaper in Melbourne.

Steven Carroll is now a full-time writer living in Melbourne with his partner, the writer Fiona Capp, and their son. As of 2019, he also writes the non-fiction book review column for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read and enjoyed Carroll’s writing, especially his Glenroy Trilogy but had never read this, his first novel. The themes and characters of later novels are apparent here: the urban landscapes of inner Melbourne and the working people who live there - railwaymen, bakers, seamstresses, women who take in washing. The men are inarticulate and the women disappointed but all dream and search for love. As the generations pass, young people seek new opportunities, such as university education or overseas travel but this inevitably distances them from their families.

At the heart of this novel is the secret of Jimmy’s parentage – an absent father, known only through a photograph that he buries under a bush near his school yard, and the identity of his biological mother. The novel’s epigraph suggests the conflict between a need for secrecy and a need to remember. This theme is worked out through the novel, but not in entirely satisfactory way. I liked the way Carroll treated all his characters with dignity and respect but was disappointed that the character of Jim in particular was not more developed. A good first novel but certainly surpassed by his later work.

[Gavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good first novel, but not a patch on his later works (which are virtually all "five stars" on Goodreads for me). Just a bit "nothing"