Voicing the Dead

by Gary Crew

You ask, 'Can the dead speak?'
I answer, 'Is this blood that runs in my veins, or ink? I ask that you read me. I ask that you hear me. See me. Touch me. Others have, and tasted my blood ...'
So writes Jack Ireland, 14 year old English born survivor of the horrors of capture by head hunters. In Voicing the Dead, internationally-awarded author Gary Crew revisits the astonishing story of nineteenth century teenager Jack Ireland who survived - and lived to fight back through his 'never say die' determination and creativity.

Genres: Read For School

345 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2015

About the author

Dr Gary Crew, author of novels, short stories and picture books for older children and young adults, began his writing career in 1985, when he was a high school teacher. His books are challenging and intriguing, often based on non-fiction. As well as writing fiction, Gary is a Associate Professor in Creative Writing, Children's and Adult Literature, at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and editor of the After Dark series.

He lives with his wife Christine on several acres in the cool, high mountains of the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in Queensland, Australia in a house called 'Green Mansions' which is shaded by over 200 Australian rainforest palms he has cultivated. He enjoys gardening, reading, and playing with his dogs Ferris, Beulah, and Miss Wendy. In his spare time he has created an Australian Rainforest Garden around his home, filled with Australian palms. Gary loves to visit antique shops looking for curios and beautiful objects.

Gary Crew has been awarded the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the year four times: twice for Book of the Year for Young Adult Older Readers (Strange Objects in 1991 and Angel’s Gate in 1993) and twice for Picture Book of the Year with First Light in 1993 (illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe) and The Watertower (illustrated by Steven Woolman) in 1994. Gary’s illustrated book, Memorial (with Shaun Tan) was awarded the Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book in 2000 and short listed for the Queensland Premier’s Awards. He has also won the Wilderness Society Award, the Whitley Award and the Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction.

In the USA he has been twice short listed for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Mystery Fiction Award for Youth and the Hungry Minds Review American Children’s Book of distinction. In Europe he has twice been and twice the prestigious White Raven Award for his illustrated books. Among his many Australian awards is the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction, the New South Wales Premier’s Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award. He has been short listed for both the Queensland Premier’s and the Western Australian Premier’s awards for Fiction.

Reviews

[Robyn Donoghue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voicing the Dead by Gary Crew is a fine example of how fictocriticism as a writing technique can coerce readers into questioning long-standing principals of recording history. The tale is based on fact, narrated by the 16-year-old Jack Ireland, one of only two survivors of the ill-fated Charles Eaton which sank in 1834, when swept onto treacherous reefs in the Torres Straits. Jack was Captain Moore’s ‘best boy’ who could not only read and write, but had a unique talent for literature tripping into other printed texts. The technique draws the reader into a rich literary landscape, while telling a thrilling and at times horrific tale of head-hunters, slavery and survival.

Gary Crew lays out his intentions from the outset, ‘all that has been told of the events of [Jack’s] life must be reconsidered, recreated and recounted and if I am to tell [Jack’s] tale in truth, I must give voice to all the dead’.

So here we have an historical fiction with Jack giving voice to previously invisible characters. The women are present and not hidden behind men, Irish orphans are heard and stand on the same deck as the wealthy D’Oyley children. Even the islanders take centre stage despite having no written language. All people who were not recognised in the historical records of the day have been given a voice. This device leads the reader to approach all the written documents with greater suspicion and think more deeply about their origins and intentions.

Throughout this process Jack tells his gripping tale of shipwreck. The horror at seeing so many of the crew bludgeoned and beheaded and how he was brought so low by circumstances. On his rescue, despite his horrific ordeal, he views his saviours with disdain as they destroy the island where the head-hunters built a shrine to honour the heads of the dead. Jack now realises that ‘civilised’ people can be as barbaric and ignorant as those less fortunate.

This novel is a great work of art incorporating that unique Gary Crew spin that leaves the reader a little bit uncomfortable, but much more the wiser. Voicing the Dead is one of those rare novels that should be studied in secondary schools and creative writing courses, for its unique approach to reviving a long forgotten piece of Australian maritime history.

Reviewed by Robyn Donoghue

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a time in the 00s when it was seen as ok to say very racist or misogynist things "ironically", and mostly people white men went around gleefully saying really offensive things with a "but I'm an ally so I am saying it ironically" smirk to them. Much of this book reminded me of that time and left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. True the really offensive attitudes Jack voices are probably very "authentic" for his time but nontheless at times you sense Crew standing behind him and he eems quite gleeful adding unnecessary flourishes like "the masculine desire to know and conquer" (271).

This is written for high schoolers, people who have a limited understanding (because limited experience) of texts still and I wondered at times if what was good in this book was too subtle and buried under remarks and views that were frankly racist (and at times sexist too, such as the portrayal of Mrs DÓyley and the constant harping on about her skull in particular). I then tried in all honesty to ask myself how could this story be told without the racism and sexism being centred so much which begged the question do we even need another text of white men's views of Torres Strait Islanders?

Admittedly Jack Ireland's story is interesting. Crew's portrayal of a classist society is well executed, he manages to both lef Jack like his "betters" yet show how unfair the society is and add ridiculous (and believable) extremes such as the life of their dog being seen as more important than the lives of the crew. For the first part of the book Crew constantly foreshadows the "headhunters" (a term I have questions about) and both builds the sense of horror but also has a sort of "Boy's Own"tone of "stories are only interesting because of headhunters and violence" which I didn't really enjoy but I admired the skill with which he achieved the anachronistic tone and use of things like direct addresses to the reader to both set the tone and also to help us accept lit-tripping which must have been difficult to integrate well into the story.

Making Jack literate was a necessary back-ground to lit-tripping. I found it more interesting in the beginning of the book (where Crew had some surprising selections of texts) and the end (where the texts served a really important purpose) whereas in the middle I tended to find the lit-trips more meh. Jack's bizarre ability to enter into anything that has ever been written (except when he most needed to of course) gives readers (high schoolers) a taste of some of the classics and other interesting literature they could look at. I honestly think the intent here is pedagogical rather than just showing off that Crew is well read (but he is and I respect that).

As I said I enjoyed some of the lit-tripping early on and could forgive the clunkiness of the interface between Jack's world and his trips (also how some of them came apropos of nothing). I really loved the use of the scene from Orlando (maybe because Orlando was a book I struggled through full of envy when I was still trying to comply with being "female"). My year 8s have accused me of always having a "hard sell" approach to reading and if Crew is doing the same, I don't know if it is ever effective but we must try! This is partly why I got past my misgivings to still rate this book highly.

The lit-tripping comes into its own in the last 2 sections of the book, where it is used to deal with unreliable narrators (The use of Orlando early on also brought this up where Jack frankly says "I love that scene but I don't believe a word of it"). Books are not "truth", they are someone's biased take on what might have happened. Jack spends quite a bit of time several times through the book critiquing versions of his "true" story that have been written by various people, including himself but under an editor's authority. At the end these critiques become crucial to start calling into question white accounts of Torres Strait islanders and to show conflict between Jack and the English society he moves back into.

This was largely redemptive for me because I was starting to see the lit-tripping as further racism, as privileging white people's (mostly white men's) ways of writing the world as somehow more important and worthy of preserving than counterstories. I was starting to see the texts contained within this text as colonialism that I suspected Crew of blindly celebrating. Maybe not so given Jack's distress over the destroyed hut and island and the clear respect he has for the mask (not for the term "trophy") albeit it is grisly containing skulls.

At times during this book I was irritated or offended, at times I was thinking "get on with it" and the events of it were quite distressing and awful to think about. The end we race on toward is unsatisfying, deconstructed and the only end possible within the masculinist and colonial world Jack found himself in (he was poor and an orphan so not really to blame). The note struck at the end is a bit triumphalist "agency through anything" and a bit fataslistic "we are savages no matter what" although I would say characters like Mr Clare perhaps challange this narrative as do some of the interactions between various sailors- the book mostly shows there is also some good intent and relationality in people even in harsh circumstances.

The book is complex, it has made me think. It is skilfully written and seems well researched. I can't with complete honesty say I "enjoyed" it, but I don't only read for enjoyment. I give it 4 stars and turn to something else with what I think is relief.

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5

Overuse of exclamation marks and brackets, the phrase 'lit tripping', direct address to the reader, gruesome details, halting the narrative to reference and justify and a grim ending all were factors that contributed to my dislike of this novel. Perhaps once I have studied it further I will gain more appreciation for it.

[Daisy · Rating 2 out of 5]

3.5

[Sean Harding · Rating 2 out of 5]

So this is apparently based on a true story and in the first person from a person who had according to this book, but who knows that could have been made up, written his own memoirs of the events. It is a fictional account of the memoirs that already had been written? It seemed a strange exercise and it was not that interesting either.

[Woff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite strange. Not sure what to make of it really.

[Joyce Sendeckyj]

Gary Crew cleverly narrates this tale as the persona of Jack Ireland, who survived the wreck of the ship the Charles Eaton which ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef in August, 1834. Crew presents Ireland as being dissatisfied with the portrayals of his story by other authors after the tragedy. The character of Jack Ireland wants to set the historical records straight and tell the 'true story' including all the little told but gruesome aspects of the encounters with cannibals and head-hunters.
Crew runs 'ink' through Jack's veins instead of blood by delving Jack into 'Literature Tripping' where authors will suddenly remind Jack of their own adventures at poignant places in the story. 'Voicing the Dead' provides bloody adventures galore for young teens and plenty of clever quoting from literary sources to keep the reader amused - different and quirky as only Crew does.