Book tells of young boy’s struggle

By Amy Huynh

The life of Bondi-born Jewish Australian author Alan Collins will not be forgotten. His final book, Alva’s Boy, is his memoir, detailing his childhood struggle as a young Jewish boy in Bondi during the 1930s.

Waverley Library will host the official Sydney launch of Alva’s Boy on March 11. Collins’ wife, Ros and Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell will launch the book in honour of Alan, who passed away before its publication.

Alva’s Boy is a personal but also a socially historical story of Australia during the Great Depression amidst the arrival of European immigrants.

“His work is important in the context of Australian literature because it comes straight out of the Anglo-Jewish experience rather than from a European perspective,” Ros Collins said.

“No one else that I can think of has written about this community.”

Collins’ childhood is laced with struggle and abuse. His mother, Alva, died giving birth to him in 1928, leaving him in the incapable hands of his father and an abusive stepmother; yet all this is told with the wry humour Collins is known for.

“What makes his work so good, in my view, is that he uses humour to make confronting and unpalatable episodes easier for us to cope with,” Mrs Collins said.

“He knew perfectly well that his experiences of a loveless abusive childhood were not on the same scale of misery as Auschwitz, but the lifelong hurt remained and he tells it as it was in Alva’s Boy.”

It is a book that breaks her heart.

“There were many things in it I didn’t know before – little details such as the way he had to eat his meals standing up outside in the laundry on an enamel plate, and the fact that he wasn’t allowed to sleep inside the house but had to make do with a camp stretcher next to the outside dunny,” she said.

“He makes me laugh out loud through the tears.

“Above all else, I want to see Alan’s work on film. His characters are so visual, the locations so quintessentially Australian. As you read Alva’s Boy you’ll find yourself casting it in your mind as you go; it’s perfect material for cinema or TV.”

Alva’s Boy was first launched in Melbourne on October 2008 and received much recognition.

Alan Collins has published several works, but is best known for his autobiographical novel The Boys from Bondi.

Alva’s Boy will be launched at 7pm at Waverley Library on Wednesday, March 11.

For information phone Waverley Library on 9386 7709.