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…