Night Falls on the City: The Lost Masterpiece of Wartime […]

To Be Called by Your Name

by Lee Shrubb

Alva’s Boy: An Unsentimental Memoir,

by Alan Collins;

Hybrid Publishers, 2008, $29.95.

Ever since people have been able to write their memoirs, many have set to. Some have been quite shattering—even world-changing—many more have been fascinating, tender, funny, brave, eye-opening or eye-glazing. Here we are at eye-opening Alva’s Boy. It has an added piquancy in that it is local in both time and place: and it happens that I have a good deal in common with Alan: he was born in 1928 and I in 1929, and I, like him, arrived at Bondi Beach Public School in 1938; and while he lived at 48 Francis Street, I lived in the parallel one behind his at 47 Sir Thomas Mitchell Road. And much else we shared, between reading The Saint and Phantom comics, frequenting local penny libraries and being Jewish.