Johnno

by David Malouf

"Despite Johnno's assertion that Brisbane was absolutely the ugliest place in the world, I had the feeling as I walked across deserted intersections, past empty parks with their tropical trees all spiked and sharp-edged in the early sunlight, that it might even be beautiful ... " Johnno is a typical Australian who refuses to be typical. His disorderly presence can disturb the staleness of his home town or destroy the tranquillity of a Greek landscape. An affectionately outrageous portrait, David Malouf's first novel recreates the war-conscious forties, the pubs and brothels of the fifties, and the years away treading water overseas.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Classics, Novels, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, 20th Century

147 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

David Malouf is a celebrated Australian poet, novelist, librettist, playwright, and essayist whose work has garnered international acclaim. Known for his lyrical prose and explorations of identity, memory, and place, Malouf began his literary career in poetry before gaining recognition for his fiction. His 1990 novel The Great World won the Miles Franklin Award and several other major prizes, while Remembering Babylon (1993) earned a Booker Prize nomination and multiple international honors.
Malouf has taught at universities in Australia and the UK, delivered the prestigious Boyer Lectures, and written libretti for acclaimed operas. Born in Brisbane to a Lebanese father and a mother of Sephardi Jewish heritage, he draws on both Australian and European influences in his work. He is widely regarded as one of Australia's most important literary voices and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve spent years writing letters to you and you never answer, even when you write back.

This was one of the most achingly nostalgic novels I’ve read. Almost everything about it seemed to be underlying. For an autobiographic novel it was fairly restrained and I never had the sense that the author/Dante knew Johnno very well, which begs the question - do we ever really know anyone? How much of Johnno was accurate? How much was 'what-if' and 'should've been?'

The writing was beautifully sad and filled with subtle yearning for things that never were and for things that can never be again. Malouf wonderfully captured the love-hate for home, the need to escape it and then that inexplicable feeling upon returning. This book is all emotion.

“The trouble with you, Dante,” Johnno told me severely, “is you’re a romantic. All you see is what you feel…”

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just returned from a lengthy road trip with my wife and we listened to the whole of this audiobook. I’m a complete newcomer to audiobooks and didn’t think I would like it, although I had already read, many years ago, this brilliant book by David Malouf. As it turns out, the narrator Chris Pittman, an Australian actor, has exactly the right voice, distinctively Australian but not too broad, for this book, which is about memories of Johnno, somewhat of a larrikin and wild man, from childhood and young adulthood, as told by his friend Dante, set in the late 1940s to the 1960s. I loved it!

[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Malouf’s Johnno, chosen in 2004 by the Brisbane City Council as a winner of the short-lived "One Book One Brisbane" initiative, had long been on my radar. Released in 1975 as Malouf’s debut novel, it is seemingly semi-biographical, based on his friendship with an old schoolmate.

I’m going to group Johnno with two other Brisbane novels that explore life “on the streets”: The Delinquents by Criena Rohan. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and Praise by Andrew McGahan https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Johnno delves into Brisbane’s streets during the earlier period of the 1940s through to the 1950s, preceding Rohan’s 1950s in The Delinquents and McGahan’s gritty 1980s in Praise. For a Brisbane reader, these three books provide a fascinating comparison: from Johnno’s defiance against the conservatism of the 1940s, to the rebellious bodgie and widgie couple in The Delinquents, and finally the alienation and disconnection of Gordon in McGahan’s modern world. The descriptions of place in all three novels vividly mirror my early memories of Brisbane in the mid-1960s—dirt roads, no sewage system, the 6 o’clock swill, and the sight of every old bloke sporting a Trilby. Today, Brisbane has transformed into yet another modern metropolis, but at the street level, these books capture the city's evolving identity. Interestingly, The Delinquents wasn’t a bestseller upon its release and only gained recognition after its film adaptation in the 1980s.

In Johnno, Malouf’s narrator Dante recounts meeting Johnno as schoolboys, seemingly from well-to-do, middle-class families. Dante describes Johnno as an outsider and prankster, intelligent and well-read in the classics. It was Johnno who gave Dante his lifelong nickname. As Johnno grew older, his wanderlust led him to Brisbane’s pubs and post-war brothels. Many of the places mentioned in the book—the street names and even a few pubs—are familiar to me. When I was an apprentice in the mid-1970s, near-retirement tradesmen often shared stories of the brothels and gambling dens that were once prolific in the city centre. The Brisbane of their youth for the most parts was isolated culturally and academically, it was very inwards looking and wary of those perceived as outsiders. For that generation, this lifestyle was as good as it got outside the dullness and sectarianism of those times. What sets this book apart is its bold depiction of a middle-class boy/young man stirring up trouble on Brisbane’s streets before deciding to get on a boat and head to Europe—a relatively novel concept in Brisbane literature at the time. Even into the mid-1970s, the idea of going ‘overseas’ carried an almost exotic allure.

Brisbane's identity shifted rapidly, shedding its big-country-town conservatism as global connectivity grew. Nowadays, street grit in Brisbane isn’t much different from the world portrayed in McGahan’s Praise. As for traveling abroad, all it takes is a plane fare, a visa to work (if you're from a Commonwealth country), and the right mindset to embrace the adventure.

Yet another great Brisbane novel. Highly recommended.

[Velvetink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnno is Malouf’s first novel and is written in the first person past tense and the narrator is only ever known by the nickname "Dante".

Apparently the book is very heavily autobiographical. It starts with Dante clearing out his father's house after his death. He finds a photograph of his friend Johnno, and the rest is for the most part reverie.

The story is centred upon the friendship between Dante and a schoolmate known as "Johnno" in their discontented adolescence and early adulthood in the 1940s and 1950s in Brisbane and of their travels overseas.

Malouf’s detailed account of Brisbane is very evocative of the times and his way with words very much places you within the hot streets of Brisbane – which seem to offer no relief or excitement. It wasn’t a city then. Just a dusty humid mosquito ridden small time town and that sultry lethargy sinks into your bones by the distinctive way Malouf writes. I was very impressed with Malouf’s “The Great World” (about two Australian men who went to war and their lives following) and thought that “Johnno” might suit my father who is more of the era of the characters in “Johnno” While “The Great World” is of the generation before… (however now that I have finished – not so sure my father would enjoy Johnno).

As in “The Great World” – “Johnno” also highlights the class differences of two growing up, one poor, one middle class - their outcomes and friendship between two men. (It’s not the class differences my father wouldn't ’enjoy but the swearing and the underlying sense of the love between the two main characters.) (I did mention to Evan and Liam my father is old fashioned. Stuck in a much earlier era where such things were never mentioned).

In any event anyone interested in the sights & local history of Brisbane would find the early chapters interesting. To some extent it mirrors many outback towns and the pervading feeling that life in them wasn’t real, that REAL LIFE was out there, over in Europe. For many Australian men both wars (however hideous in outcomes were) in the beginning spelt escape and freedom. That feeling is what powered “Johnno”. I can’t deny in myself that the feeling that the Antipodes is at the bottom of the world, & that we are secluded from things. I think for many Australians there is still that need.

Anyhooo onwards….

Johnno and Dante. Who are they?

You can almost smell the anticipation and burning need of these two young men to escape the small country town of Brisbane – to experience something “other”. Johnno is adventurous, the appointed class clown at school, the rebel – never likely to do well – of course he is not from the middle class ranks like Dante whose father was too old to go to war. Johnno’s father went to war and never came back. Missing. Dante was the studious, cautious one. Though they both graduate university, Johnno’s interest is geology and books (highly unexpected considering his poverty). Rimbaud and Baudelaire are books he pressures Dante to read although Dante had not explored them, had no passion to find them himself. Johnno longs for culture which Brisbane doesn’t have and he leaves for Paris and places exotic. Mining guides his choices.

Dante’s future is less clearly defined. He seems to have no desire to leave or explore but eventually Dante follows Johnno to Paris.The visit isn’t successful. Neither find in the other what they wanted. Dante teaches in the UK for a while and ends up in an office back in Brisbane. Their time together throughout the book centers on the great male Australian tradition of drinking and to a lesser extent visiting brothels and dare devil acts of defiance. Johnno often wants to burn buildings down somehow to quell his rage against what? – Dante is never sure. Their relationship is bound up in yearning, and regret.

Malouf totally denies that Johnno is a gay novel but both the main characters =seem to pine for each other in each other’s absence. The cover photograph reminds one of the white Oxford style clothing as represented in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh that is/was for a time synonymous with gay male culture especially pre-WW2. So I do wonder about the publisher’s choice of photograph.

” Readers of a later and more knowing time have taken this to be a gay novel in disguise. It is not. If I had meant to write a gay novel I would have done so. If there was more to tell about these characters I would have told it.”- Malouf

Spoiler;












In the end I am saddened. Life seems to cave in on Dante - he is captured by Brisbane. Johnno has a fatal accident rather than be captured. Before the accident he sends one more letter to Dante expressing his love. When you read that you realise the love between them that you sensed throughout was there, even if Malouf will continue to deny it. I think in many ways Malouf is as old fashioned as my father.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★
I loved it – the style, the descriptions of time and place, the feeling of impatient youth, the impetuousness of kids when they disobey to show off, the virtual shedding of parental shackles at uni – all of it. Most writers have been through their own versions of these things, but Malouf translates it to the page better than most.

This does not read like a first novel, but more like the work of a seasoned writer who is now looking back at some early experiences and weaving them into this story.

It reminded me of many other stories, the Hemingway years in Paris and all the dramatic searches by young people for The Meaning of Life, but “Johnno” is in a category of its own. The conflict and connection between the narrator and his subject are so clear that you’d like to warn them before they do something they’ll regret.

An old school photo prompts reminiscences of a steamy, post-WWII Brisbane childhood. They were exciting, but exasperating, times for kids desperate to explore the world after the privations of wartime Australia. Like most kids, they’re sure something better is happening somewhere – anywhere – else.

At school, Johnno’s frustrated teachers were as charmed as they were repelled by his mischief and crimes.

“We were all awed, I think, by his sheer recklessness. He would do ANYTHING. Get up with a shrug of his shoulders and accept any dare. Accept with the same lift of his shoulders any punishment. . . No crime was beyond him. He was a born liar and an elegant shoplifter . . .”

‘Dante’, so christened by Johnno, never quite understood why he and his bookish ways were tolerated by this rebel. There were enough kids mesmerised by his exploits, but Johnno seemed almost to seek Dante’s acknowledgment that he was worth something. And Dante seemed to need the same in return.

Then suddenly, about the time other boys were leaving school at 15-16, Johnno stunned them by returning – tidy, sporty, and studious. An enigma wrapped in a riddle, as Churchill famously described Russia.

At uni, Friday night drinking sessions led both boys to fall unrequitedly in love (how could those girls resist them?) - to the point that Johnno shed Australia for the Congo, sending scrawled postcards to Dante now and then, often with no return address.

Dante stubbornly persevered at home but eventually felt himself stagnating and drawn to Europe. He found Johnno broke and living hand to mouth, sleeping till afternoon, and just because he couldn’t resist the challenge, taunting the local police while charming the Parisian madams and their girls.

After a few years in Paris and London, Dante returns to Queensland. He has trouble recognising his hometown, he’s not so sure about the new girlfriend he came back for, and then he discovers Johnno is back, also unrecognisable – gross and dishevelled. An awkward attempt to reconnect results in Dante pouring Johnno into a taxi and sending him home, as he did so often in the past.

The boyhood leader of the charge has disintegrated into a caricature while his admiring follower seems to have grown up.

I can’t do it justice. I know it’s studied in Australian schools and book groups, and I certainly recommend it myself. Thought-provoking and real.

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Malouf is a much-lauded Australian author. I was excited to finally read him.
This novel is set mostly in Brisbane, Australia, covering a period between the 1940s to the 1950s.
Johnno is written in the first person by someone nicknamed Dante. He reminisces about a friend named Johnno, former high school mate.
Malouf's writing was evocative and nostalgia-inducing.
Unfortunately, at the end of the novel, I was still unclear about the point Malouf was trying to make if there was one to be made at all. Was it that we never truly know anyone? Was it that male friendships are strange?

Even though this didn't completely wow me, the writing was good enough to convince me that I should try another Malouf novel.

[diario_de_um_leitor_pjv · Rating 5 out of 5]

uma pequena novela de aprendizagem e sobre o poder da amizade. um livro em que a linguagem e o imaginário literário estão sempre presentes.

[*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings for this novel, perhaps like Dante's feelings towards Johnno, but overall I believe it was a decent book, very descriptive in some parts which I believed was a little too much for my liking but I really liked how it ended. I think it was by the second half that the book interested me more, it made me think about certain things and about the idea of friendship.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent. Australian literature. Malouf's first novel, though one wouldn't know it.
"Maybe in the end, even the lies we tell define us."

[Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favourite Australian novel. It's hard to explain why, and my reasons may be too personal to persuade any newcomers to this book, but all I know is that Malouf's simple sounding sentences, written in that tender, inward-evoking manner, have held my interest for twenty years now.

I was seventeen when I had this book prescribed to me for my Year 11 Literature class. Our list of books to read included 'Gulliver's Travels', 'A Man for All Seasons', and 'Johnno'. The only book I read to the end was 'Johnno'. In the meantime I sat as quietly as possible while the other students recounted the many merits, crucial characters, events and plot developments that you notice when you read an entire book. My literature teacher was aware of my neglect. Anybody who suggests Jonathan Swift, Robert Bolt and David Malouf as required reading can't be that inattentive. I'm sure the reason why he didn't reprimand me for such literary laziness was that he didn't want to interrupt the flow of interest I had, we all have, when a piece of great writing eventually makes contact.

I don't want to turn this into a ponderous, sentimental book review. But David Malouf's 'Johnno' brought me into contact with all the kinds of uncertainty of feeling, doubt, and misunderstanding that can occur among your closest friends. Just when you think you understand someone, just when you think you understand yourself, you do or say something that throws both of you off the rails. Or did he do that? Did we just think it?

Mysteriousness was the prevailing feeling for me when I first read it. The kind that is elicited not by an author's desire to keep the reader in the dark, but to remind them that our own perception of events are concealed further by our vivid yet unreliable memories. The inner states of consciousness are what David Malouf conveys so well in his writing. And I'm grateful that I spotted it while I was a daydreaming and detached young man. Much like Johnno.

[Declan Melia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second time I've read this wonderful, short novel and I think I liked it even more the second time. This is a novel but it reads like a memoir and the atmosphere of nostalgia is so heavy you feel like you are breathing it in. From cover to cover every sentence almost aches with a intangible longing. No other book I can remember better articulates the melancholic loss that clouds adulthood.

The story is simple. Dante grows up in post war Brisbane. He watches the city change, he watches the nation change and he watches his friends change. All the while he stays and feels exactly the same. More than anything though, Dante watches Johnno, his outrageous friend and alter ego who seems to possess all the qualities that Dante lacks. He participates in and even antagonises reality while Dante remains forever an observer.

I have always adored novels in which the protagonist is not the narrator (On The Road, Breakfast at Tiffany's etc..). Why might this be? Perhaps its because they articulate the feeling we all must get that life is something that happens to other people. The feeling that time is pushing us along by the small of the back and everything that happens to us was beyond our agency or will. That no one can ever know how we truly feel, that we are unknowable and alone forever.

This book is masterfully crafted. Every sentence counts towards the greater aching whole. An uncelebrated, unvalued, utterly tragic but blissfully beautiful aspect of the human experience in 160 pages.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A very well written, memorable, short novel in the first person, past tense. The narrator, nicknamed ‘Dante’, now an older man, recalls his long time friend, Johnno. Dante writes about growing up in Brisbane in the 1940s and 1950s. His friend Johnno is a rebellious, charismatic, somewhat lonely character who continues to shop lift well after his early boyhood years. Johnno spends time working at a mine site and is the first to leave Australia, living in Paris for years. Dante also leaves Australia, finding work teaching in England. He meets Johnno in Paris for a few weeks and later in Greece.

It’s a poignant story about coming of age and how well do we really know our friends. A novel worth rereading. (As an older Australian I found this book brought back memories of my teens and early 20s).

Here is an example of the author’s writing style:
‘....it occurred to me how little I had really known him...I had forced upon my father the character that fitted most easily with my image of myself; to have had to admit to any complexity in him would have compromised my own.’

[nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵. 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧, 𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴, 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘯’𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦?”

What is a man’s life but a couple of choices, chances, and consequences?

This book is like seeing a friend you haven’t seen in a long while at a party. You catch up. See how the world’s changed, while still living in the same worlds you’ve built yourselves upon. You catch each other’s old habits. Old phrases. Old views that should change but they’re still there. You see the newness that has overlapped a life, new thoughts, new desires, and they’re all a bit off-putting. Maybe because you’re still stuck in your old ways or maybe you’ve realized you’ve been living too deep within yourself you’ve forgotten to consider that other people have other lives.

The party lulls and you drift off, but at some point, when a window between bodies presents itself, there is your friend, in a different light, in a different world, and maybe you think to go to that world. But taking a few steps toward your friend is admitting you are leaving your own self in your own world, an admittance to a chance at change, greater and bigger than both of you.

[Will Mallett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I DID IT!!!! I READ A BOOK!!!

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this novel back in 2017 but didn't review it then and when I thought about doing so I decided that it would make sense to read the book again - I am glad I did because Malouf has been one of my favourite author's for many years but a rereading allowed me to really appreciate this novel's qualities and how much it meant to me. It is a wonderful novel about friendship, this is not a 'gay' novel, poor
Malouf must be sick of insisting on this, but that doesn't limit or mean that what is expressed is any less real, deep or important. It is also a wonderful novel about Australia, growing up, going away, coming home (and yes it both proves and disproves that hoary old cliche from Tobias Wolfe about how 'You can't go home') and like all novel rooted in the particular it speaks loudly to the universal. I have never been to Australia and the Brisbane of his youth is as vanished as Joyce's Dublin (or the Dublin of my youth because it is not just the vanishing of physical landmarks that is important) yet I feel if there were time machines and I could go back to Brisbane in the 1940s and 50s that I would not be surprised at what I found or the people I met.

I loved this novel and don't see the point in writing vastly about the story line or characters, there is sufficient synopsis on Goodreads and elsewhere for that, all you need to know is that Malouf is a wonderful, powerful writer and discovering this or any of his novels is a treat you will long remember.

[Bradley Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nostalgic novel in regard to setting, that for me, made the characters and plot insignificant. Malouf has such a rich command of language, and I enjoyed the book in this regard. However, at the end I found myself asking, what was this book trying to say? It's hard to criticize a master writer like Malouf, but this book left me wanting something more. The main character seemed to lack empathy - but was this the intention? And what did the narrator really think of Johnno? I felt like there was too much holding back around the topic of male friendship, as if it was too afraid to call it love. Maybe this is the point - but for what purpose?

[Alayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept on wondering what the book was about as I read it. At first I thought it was going to be about the author's father, but no, it wasn't. It was meant to be about his friend Johnno, but was frustrating because the author knew so little about the man - what motivated him etc. It was sort of autobiographical, but again frustrating because it never gave details on any aspect of his life. So I found it annoying mainly.

[Sharon Metcalf · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

Johnno by David Malouf was about a guy who came home to sort out the family home after his father died. I say "a guy" because I can't be sure I recall the protagonists name...perhaps it was not disclosed. Anyway, whilst this guy was clearing out one of the rooms he encountered a photo which triggered a bunch of memories of Johnno, a long time friend. The story unfolded through his reminiscences.

This book was widely acclaimed but for some reason I didn't really respond to it the way I expected. The thing I liked best (and this part I really enjoyed) was seeing my home town through the eyes of a person who lived there in the post war years. So much of it was set in Brisbane. He frequented a pub which is opposite the high rise building I work in today. The names of streets and buildings were familiar but his Brisbane and mine were considerably different. Yet in this difference I found a great deal of enjoyment.


As for Johnno, I could take him or leave him but I'm happy to have finally read this author.

[Deborah Pickstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astonishingly well written for a debut novel. Malouf has always denied that this is gay fiction but my thoughts are that the problem with that category is that it is about 'sexual' orientation rather than 'gender' orientation: that is, people focus on who x has sex with rather than on whom they are able to love/ create a relationship with. This, I believe, is the truth of what sexual orientation means and can account for everything from a mutually celibate relationship to a committed life-long sexual partnership and marriage. What it is largely not about is promiscuous behaviour; it refers to a person's capacity for relationship. Within my understanding, then, this story is about a deep, abiding and often difficult love between two men which was not characterised by being sexual but was probably the full extent of either of their capacity for love and commitment. Who cares what label we put on that?

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like everything else I've read from Malouf, extremely well written. This is a very fictionalized semi-autobiograpical story based on a friend he had from adolescence into adulthood named Johnno. Johnno was a somewhat manipulative, often unpleasant and unpredictable character. Not someone I would choose as a friend but, evidently, Malouf seemed to like him. The story told of their escapades growing up in Brisbane and then their on again off again relationship as they traveled and lived in Europe. It was a good read but not as good as his other books. But then this was his first published work. Malouf is an extraordinary writer who usually tells very imaginative original stories in absolutely beautiful prose, this one just didn't have the imaginative story.

[Steve Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is David Malouf's debut novel from 1975. Set, partly in Brisbane after the war and through to the seventies, the story is told by Dante (a nickname given to him by Johnno). It's a coming-of-age story, but also a tale of two men and their friendship with each other.

Beautifully told, this tale will have a profound effect on all who read it.

I might grow old in Brisbane, but I would never grow up. Johnno

I spent years writing letters to you and you never answer, even when you write back. Johnno.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s so eerie but captivating to have a book written about your city.

[Kevin Klehr · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We don’t have the characters now that we had in the past.”

That was said by a work colleague back in the 90s who was talking about how younger generations didn’t have adventures any more, like people had in the past. So, they were watered down versions of themselves. They hadn’t built themselves to be the characters they were meant to be.

This conversation kept coming to mind as I read Johnno, David Malouf’s first novel. It was first published in 1975, yet talks about Brisbane at a time it didn’t resemble a city, during the 1940s and 50s. I was surprised to find a major park housed animals in cages for people to just look at as they went on their way, back in this period.

Dante tells about his friendship with Johnno in first person.

Although, they are never close throughout this whole tale, meeting up sporadically both in Brisbane and later in Europe. I felt Johnno was nothing more than a colourful acquaintance. At one stage he has a girlfriend who Dante gets to know quite well, and it’s these small scenes with her which feel more personal.

Throughout the book, Johnno’s behaviour is odd. He stands outside the classroom being a pain to the science teacher. He makes Dante visit brothels just so Johnno can cause drama, which eventually gets them barred from these establishments. Yet, it’s this period of their lives where I felt Johnno was the most settled.

Then there’s the Europe years. Johnno has returned from years in Africa earning good money, then is stuck in a seedy and violent version of Paris when Dante comes to stay with him. He wants to leave and tries to talk Dante into moving to other Euro destinations, but nothing comes of it.

This is why the conversation about ‘characters’ kept coming to mind.

I can think back to my own school years of the 70s and 80s, and there were people like Johnno around. As society gentrified, so did potential Johnnos.

But I also believe if Johnno was alive today, a psychiatrist would have him on pills. His behaviour sometimes felt ADHD or perhaps another diagnosis where irrational thinking is a symptom.

In the end, this examines how much we actually know someone.

To Dante, Johnno is obviously an enigma. Dante’s own desires never match Johnno’s. Johnno lives on the edge. Johnno is irrational. Johnno finds joy in making trouble. Johnno is seeking friendship in an abstract way. Dante is aiming for a safe, yet often boring, life.

It’s this unknowing quality of who the title character actually is, which fuels this novel. Dante never knows him well enough to give the reader insight. Yet for me, this was a strange page turner. I didn’t devour the book, but it often called to me to finish it.

[Chrisnaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to pin down my feelings about this book. Malouf denies that this is a gay novel, but it's hard not to see any homoerotic undertones in the relationship between Dante and Johnno, the sense of tangible longing between the two that stretches across the page.

The book is a tribute to the fragility of memory, how the passing of time shapes our memory and subsequently our past and relationships. When Johnno writes "I've loved you and you've never given a f*** for me", it hints at a depth to the relationship that Dante had never really showed the reader, that the memories Dante had were quite different to the ones Johnno had of the same events, leaving a sense of tragedy behind.

I felt like I was reading a Ishiguro novel, the style and themes of the novel felt very similar. Unlike Ishiguro's novels though, I felt like there wasn't really a climactic recollection moment, maybe the letter, but there was nothing really that cast the previous book into a shatteringly beautiful new light. The characters remain frustratingly unfulfilled, but perhaps that was the point of it all?

I did relate strongly to the image of Brisbane Malouf drew. Despite the Brisbane of the modern day that I grew up in having grown quite a bit since the Brisbane of the 30s/40s, the same atmosphere exists of nature being nearby and co-existing with urbanity much more than in Sydney or Melbourne, the riverside feels much more intwined with nature than it does in Melbourne and Sydney, at least in my experience. And there's still the same undercurrent of dreariness, the need to escape to fully taste the nature of life and the fear that one can't escape the clutches of a sprawling Brisbane, that one cannot truly be a 'romantic' in a city like Brisbane. Maybe it's the similarities between the Brisbane Malouf sees and that I see, that makes Johnno hit all that harder.

[Cate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this. I LOVED the descriptions of Brisbane. Admittedly, not the Brisbane I grew up in, but its rambling predecessor. I don't know what it is about Brisbane but its writer/residents are drawn to try to understand the town and how it has shaped those who've lived there in a way quite distinct from those who've lived and grown up in other places. There is this desperate need to come to grips with Brisbane, understand it's nuances and delve deeply into how it's made us all different. I was back there, wandering my old home town in my memory, trying to bring that sub-tropical wilderness to mind. Johnno & Dante are mirrors in a way - who can't relate to the primal scream - railing against the oddness that is Brisbane yet loving it roughly, violently, wanting to leave, get a life somewhere else, yet clinging & staying. That duality is well captured. The end is heartbreakingly sad - Johnno's last plea to Dante: I loved you, but you've never given a fuck. That is a crystal moment when the novel makes sense. I'd recommend this for so many reasons. A good read.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a deeply personal little book, filled with the poignant and sometimes contradictory emotions that often come with reflection upon people and places once known. David Malouf's quietly poetic writing style works perfectly here, evoking the dual personality of Dante and Johnno's Brisbane: a warm, familiar and safe anchorage at times, and a decaying and culturally bereft subtropical prison at others. As a character Johnno is hugely appealing, always enhancing his own roguery, mayhem and confounding unpredictability with a self-aware sense of theatrical flourish. As the story progresses, of course, some of Johnno's deeper and darker currents begin to surface. It's hard to read this book without thinking about some of the Johnnos in your own life, and I suppose that's part of what makes it so appealing.

[Johnny G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was totally intrigued by the descriptions of Brisbane and its post-WWII socio-economic climate, but it's Dante's (the narrator's) has a love-hate relationship with the title character that is intended to drive the story. I'd say it mostly succeeds there, but Johnno (the character) just isn't that compelling. I mean, I got bored with Johnno for the same reason Dante did. Maybe that's a win for Malouf's ability to portray the character accurately.

I would've liked to have known more about Dante and his life away from Johnno. For most of the book, it seem like Johnno is Dante's sole social outlet and personal adviser. Late in the story, Malouf alludes to other relationships Dante has, and only then did I realize he was a better-rounded person.

[Wilton314 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read David Malouf's Johnno when I was at Uni when we had to do a 'cultural elective'. I found it on my bookshelf years later and re-read it. I though it was much better the second time around. (Older definitely, perhaps even wiser?) It resonated with me because it is about kids growing up and getting into trouble (boys will be boys) in Brisbane during the Second World War. I remembered stories from my father from when he was growing up in the same town and time. Very good. I would read it again.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book a lot more when I read the author's afterword at the end. I really didn't like the antagonist of the story (Johnno) but the tale was well told and, as always with Malouf, beautifully written. Never really got me in in the same way that Fly Away Peter did but, in the end, I was glad I read it.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the first bit of the book where the narrator is describing life as a child in Australia while the community is focused on the war
Once it became focused on Johnno as an adult I lost interest. In fact neither character interested me at all.