No Church in the Wild

I heard Murray Middleton's novel recommended on the ABC's Book Shelf programme but didn't know or had forgotten the details of what it was about. I'm so out of the loop that I didn't realise No Church in the Wild is a rap song (my daughter was able to play it to me). This novel plunged me into a world that is close to my own geographically, set in the housing towers of Flemington and Kensington in Melbourne's inner west, but a universe away in terms of experience. The casually racist police officer, the struggling high school teacher (okay, maybe I have come across a few of those), but above all the kids, flailing to keep their heads above the water of disadvantage, trauma and a society stacked against them, are people whose lives I don't ordinarily see.

No Church in the Wild loosely coheres around a planned trip to Kokoda, but the real drama lies in the quietly devastating revelations that Middleton almost buries in the midst of the kids' bragging, scheming and joking around. The ending made me catch my breath. This was a novel that I probably wouldn't have sought out, but I'm so glad that I read it.