Davey Darling

by Paul Shannon

This superb coming-of-age novel contains echoes of Ian Cross's The God Boy. Both novels look at the world and family relationships through the eyes of a young boy on the brink of adolescence.
Davey Ardsley is twelve years old, growing up in a working-class suburb of Christchurch in the early 1970s (Norman Kirk has just died) with a big, violent, hard-case father and a long-suffering mother. The fridge is always full of beer; his mother is always lighting another fag to have with her cup of tea. Davey is a bit of a hard-case himself, giving his father and Terry Appleby, the local thug, plenty of lip.
One day Davey witnesses something he shouldn't have and the repercussions that follow pitch the Ardsleys down a dark and tragic road. The outcome is that Davey has to choose between loyalty to his father or telling the truth.

(From Publisher)

Paul Shannon was born in Ashburton in 1961 and spent his childhood in the big town of Canterbury and Southland. After graduating form Otago University he lived in Wellington and now lives in Auckland with his partner Leanne and two sons Hunter and Lewis. Davey Darling is his first Novel