Barry Jonsberg
Catch Me If I Fall
In some ways, Barry Jonsberg has always been ahead of his time. While his early work navigated class and friendship in the rough-and-tumble world of the schoolyard, his Pandora Jones trilogy, published in 20142015, was one of the first Australian attempts to replicate the massively popular Hunger Games books and stories like it. My Life as an Alphabet, turned into the film H is for Happiness, was about awkward protagonist Candice Phee, who is perhaps on the autism spectrum, although this is never confirmed in the book. Jonsberg was more overt in his efforts to introduce a transgender character in A Song Only I Can Hear, a middle-grade novel praised in Books+Publishing for its “powerful treatment” of gender identity issues.
It is hard to decide whether Jonsberg is naturally cutting-edge, or if his stories come from a desire to write what sells. He has tried his hand at everything – dystopic trilogies, magical realism and straight-up realism, as well as covering all the character-type trends. But his work is strongest when he writes about the ways people misunderstand each other, particularly as young people and adolescents.
Jonsberg’s early novels had the kind of gritty, high-stakes realism celebrated in
’80s and ’90s Australian young adult fiction, although this kind of fiction is less celebrated these days, with a few notable exceptions. The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull, his much-lauded YA debut, interrogated class and social stereotypes as played out in a classroom warzone. Kiffo, the underdog of the book, is painted as a stereotypical juvenile delinquent –
with a bad home and bad attitude – but his unlikely friendship with Calma, a brainy do-gooder, is redemptive for them both. Jonsberg has a tendency to turn the tables on his readers, creating characters with all the markings of a particular schoolyard “type”, and then putting them in situations where they have the opportunity to surprise those around them – as well as the reader.
Catch Me If I Fall, Jonsberg’s latest middle-grade novel, is a book that, on the surface at least, doesn’t give much away. It’s packaged with a cover that offers very few hints about the book’s contents, and the blurb doesn’t add many more. Going into the book, the reader will likely only know that it’s a story about Ash and Aiden Delatour, twins whose lives are forever altered when Aiden suffers a serious injury that fundamentally changes his behaviour.
It would be easy to think that this is another well-intentioned novel about a character with disability, written by a person without the lived experience to do it justice. Thankfully, this is not that novel. Without wanting to offer any serious spoilers here, Catch Me If I Fall in fact explores the effects of climate change, class and artificial intelligence on people’s lives in a near-future Australia.
Jonsberg is subtle in the way he introduces the futuristic setting into the novel. The book opens with a relatively standard scene in which Ash and Aiden beg their mother for another bedtime story, but instead get a lecture on sibling responsibility: “Siblings are there to catch you when you fall.” Climate change is only hinted at, in the extreme weather that knocks the power out and causes raging storms outside the house.
Fast-forward six years, and the twins and their parents have moved to a more stable location, with a big house, advanced technology, and enough wealth to buy their way into a prestigious school. It isn’t until part way through the novel that we discover the reason for the family’s riches, and that their privilege is even more extreme than by current standards – they live in a future where, except for the biological surprise of twins or triplets, couples are sterilised after having one child, due to a lack of resources; the natural world is a harsh and barren place, in which even a spider is a rare and astonishing sight; and a wall has been built to “protect” those who are able to live by government regulations from those who can’t (or won’t). Jonsberg’s future is well imagined and compelling, although the sheer scope of his ideas would have perhaps been better served by a slightly longer novel, giving him the space to really tease them out.
A chance encounter with a group of teenagers from the other side of the wall, coupled with the trauma from his head injury, leaves Aiden in particular questioning his privilege. Ash, who is far more comfortable with her wealth and luxury, is slower to follow, but is prompted to start seeing the world differently, which ultimately allows her to be there for Aiden when he needs her the most.
The lessons in the novel can be a bit on the nose. Jonsberg’s tendency to upset stereotypes is somewhat forced – Ash’s new schoolfriend Charlotte is on the lower rungs of society among those on the “right” side of the wall, and she opens Ash’s eyes to the values and pressures of hard work, while Ash’s teacher, Mr Meredith, is a charming freethinker, able to befriend his students enough that they take on board his not-so-subtle teachings about seeing people from a different point of view. Ash herself is too self-centred at times, frustrating in her lack of nuanced perspective, and her shallowness can be difficult to believe when she’s by no means stupid.
Despite this, Jonsberg is an easy writer to read – fast-paced, with a natural voice – and his years of teaching are apparent in his (mostly) well-observed teenage characters. Catch Me If I Fall will no doubt be devoured by its intended audience and spark some fascinating – and necessary – conversations about the future of our planet, the ethics of technology, and the way we can use whatever privilege we have to make a difference.
A quarter-century has passed since Christos Tsiolkas published his blazing debut novel, Loaded, in 1995. I first devoured it in the mid2000s and it seemed to shoot through my veins. Like the protagonist Ari, I was a queer teenager living in Richmond, although by then the Walkman that he carried everywhere had already started to give way to MP3 players. But everything else held true for my own adolescence: shame matched with desire, the disconnect between firstgeneration migrants and their children, the impossible thrill of music. Cocksure bravado papering a deep fear. Yearning and burning.
And there was Melbourne, vivid and gritty in that peculiarly ’90s way. In one scene Ari walks home via Lennox Street – my street – and I learnt just how uncomfortably close a novel could get. It could come up to your window and peer inside.
Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre initially planned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Loaded with its stage premiere, adapted by Tsiolkas and playwright Dan Giovannoni, but after Covid-19 the production was reimagined as an audio play. In four acts over 104 minutes, our ears follow Ari – played by Roy Joseph – on his heady, drug-fuelled 24-hour romp through Melbourne’s east, north, south and west.
The adaptation moves the story to the present day, or at least to the recent past: there are smartphones and vegan hipster housemates, new music and new drugs, but no lockdown or curfew or five-kilometre radius. The update feels a touch superficial: this Ari was born in the new millennium – after Loaded; after Ana Kokkinos’s 1998 film adaptation, Head On – but he remains a product of the ’90s. There are moments when it feels as though the writers name-check a series of pop culture references in lieu of committing to either time line. M.I.A. is one of many musicians cited and at times the script reminded me of her lyrics in songs such as “Matangi” – a roll call fronting as a manifesto. Ari doesn’t seem like someone who grew up with Tsiolkas being one of Australia’s pre-eminent writers.
Some parts really come alive, especially the end of the “north” section, when Ari relays his personal commandments, and the beginning of the “south” part, a slow revelation of lust, tenderness and frustration. Joseph delivers an astute and dynamic performance under Stephen Nicolazzo’s direction, while Daniel Nixon’s composition brings Ari’s internal and external soundtrack to life.
Music is the engine of Ari’s story, its rhythms tracing the contours of his moods as he laughs, dances, runs and rages, and here Nixon’s sound design does a lot of the heavy lifting in creating a sense of place and movement.
But despite the skill evident in this work, I can’t help feeling that something crucial is missing. This production feels like an audiobook: it’s an asynchronous sonic experience with a single narrator that you can enjoy at your convenience. There’s nothing wrong with that, and some audiences may even prefer it – but it’s not what I want from theatre.
The thing is, it’s true what we say about the magic of theatre. There’s no replicating a room’s held breath, the collective anticipation, the taut, shared moment. The curtain and the darkness.
Whether you’re sitting in plush raked rows or perched awkwardly on milk crates or finding your way through a promenade work, theatre is a multisensory experience that’s both participatory and passive. Here, you’re left to curate your own environment in isolation. Where a book is malleable to your imagination, and live theatre commands your immediate, embodied attention in a temporary community, this audio format falls into an uncomfortable middle space that’s neither simultaneous nor self-paced, neither open nor closed.
That’s more a critique of this artform than of the work. But for anyone who hasn’t encountered this story in any of its previous incarnations, the ensemble of characters here can be a touch hard to follow, given Ari’s breakneck pace. Johnny (played memorably by Paul Capsis in the film) still stands out, but some of the others blur together. Those who’ve enjoyed previous iterations of Loaded may find that this isn’t the staging we’ve been waiting for.
Disclosure: Christos Tsiolkas is The Saturday Paper’s film critic.