A subtle, appealing, assured debut novel, Careful, He Might Hear You is still regarded as an Australian classic six decades after publication. The story centres around a boy whose peaceful life with his aunt and uncle (the only parents he has ever known) is interrupted by the arrival of another aunt from London, who enters a legal battle to take custody of him.

It is not often that a writer's debut novel remains their most famous (and best, for that matter), but there are two common reasons why this might be so, and Elliott evinces both of them. First, it is autobiographical, based on the author's recollections of being raised by aunts in Sydney in the 1920s. Second, it is the work of an experienced writer. By the time he published his first novel, Elliott had spent 25 years writing first radio serials in Australia and then live television dramas in New York City. He was already skilled at the art of sketching multiple points-of-view, of softening seemingly villainous characters and toughening apparent heroes, and composing dialogue which reveals both the inner and outer lives of the people speaking.

Elliott had some interest in modernism, which comes across strongly in some of his later novels, but if we're honest he was perhaps not a serious, by which I mean linguistically difficult writer. This is subtly drawn but still ultimately melodrama. As such, it remains an easy read decades after publication but shows signs of age in the dialogue and character interactions. What it gains, perhaps, in retrospect is a historian's view of an Australia long gone but still casting shadows over us all. ( )

I haven't read this for maybe twenty years or so. I didn't even make it through to the end of the first page this time before I started getting anxious about what lay ahead for PS.

The way Mr Elliott described PS's thoughts and reactions to the chaos the adults in his world were creating was marvellous. His journey from his initial innocence to the loss of it was at times heartbreaking as he struggled to make sense of who he was and where he felt his loyalties should lie.

The honest description of who Lila and Vanessa were - not being confined to either the good or the bad, but covering both - showed them to be more complex as the story wore on. Being 'inside their heads' like that, and after uncovering much of their past as I read on, I sometimes found myself confused as to whose side in the battle for PS I was really on.

I even happened to find a version of the book with a wonderful foreward by Robin Nevin (who played Lila in the movie version)!

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The central character of this charming Australian Miles Franklin Award Winner is PS, a six year old orphan. He is being raised in the happy household of his Aunt Lila and Uncle George, and has adventures with his Bohemian Aunt Vere and his eccentric Aunt Agnes. All is well until his wealthy Aunt Vanessa arrives from England. She wants to give him a "better" life, and begins seeking custody.

For most of the book we are in PS's head, and we learn of most of the conversations and doings of the grown-ups through the filter of his child's mind and imagination. There are misunderstandings and doubts, and much sadness, but this is a wonderful book.

Quote:

"The conversations overlapped, crossed and looped, knitting the divided years together. Knit the year Mater died, purl the year George comapaigned for the labor party in the election, cast off the year Agnes returned from Seattle, the year Sinder's book was published, purl the summer Vere nearly married Gilbert Whatwashis name, knit PS and cast off...."

Highly recommended. ( )

Moving story of the struggle between two sisters to adopt their nephew. The story is told from several different points of view with several flashbacks to when the mother of the boy was alive. ( )