Against the Tide by Irene Savvides

Title: Against The Tide

Author: Irene Savvides

Publisher: ABC Books

Publish date: 2008

ISBN: 9 780733 322907

‘We float on fat expectations

And big helpings of nostalgia

To a land memory has rendered perfect

By absence and a good dose of bitter wine.’

I’m going to get a tad vehement here. This is a bona fide world-class Australian YA offering, and yet wherever you look, it’s out of print. You can scarcely find a review of it, and when you do they focus on appreciating the depiction of the struggles of young people, specifically immigrants.

It’s so much more than that.

Firstly, no-one is mentioning that it’s a blatant (and successful) homage to The Odyssey. From the very first pages, the descriptions of wine and sea, and the direct and insistent reference to the exported Greekness, along with the obvious similarity the verse format, make the allusions inescapable. The longing for home, regardless of where ‘home’ is, is the central theme of the book, not the struggle of young people specifically – even though these are indeed the main protagonists. Travel, distance, memory, and overcoming monsters. These are the themes.

In addition to the usual techniques, the characterization is accomplished partially through the clear differences in verse form for all the man characters. Which reminds me that (in my vehemence) I have gone about this review in an unorthodox fashion.

It’s a verse novel. The main characters are high school students: Katie (an ocean swimmer nut, whose mother has run off with her uncle, and who moves inland from Cronulla with her father as a result); Effie (from the Greek community at Westmead, where Katie moves to); and Christie (likewise a Greek from Westmead who is a rapper who drops out of school to continue the family baking business). In the meantime Katie’s cousin Matt (also an ocean swimmer and the son of her uncle her mother ran off with – they have similar problems, you see) and Effie fall in love with each other. The narrative revolves around the sea, with the two ocean swimmers living and breathing it and Effie not being able to swim because her baby brother drowned in it years ago. Friendships form, help is extended, mistakes are made and rectified.

The 2005 Cronulla Riots are brought in towards the close of the novel. Like with Odysseus’ homecoming, ‘home’ is made strange. The Suitors are the hire-a-mob rioters who have no place in the home and are there merely to ruin it for their own pleasure. Like Odysseus, the protagonists ultimately deal with the issues by moving away again – although, this not being the Bronze Age, there’s no vengeful slaughter in the meantime (shucks).

My own piece is now joining the throngs of lame reviews, because to do the book justice would take detailed analysis and a thorough exposition of all the themes and techniques. Which I’m not about to do. In the meantime I’ll sit back and be grateful that someone still actually takes the trouble to write work like this, even if it’s then handed out to unwilling schoolkids and left to run out of print in a dusty corner. Homer never died, after all.