*At the Cross by Jon Rose (Andre Deutsch, 1961)

 

A memoir by this fine writer about two years he spent in Sydney's bohemian ghetto when he was 16 and 17.  Jon Rose leaves his unloving and thwarting family in Melbourne at the tender age of 16 and travels with a couple -- a man and a woman who both are (sexually) interested in him -- to the "Cross," an enclave in Sydney that is home to artists, homosexuals, and other outliers.  Jon quickly moves in with Bella, a middle-aged prostitute, who guides him with kindness and wisdom through the complicated and sometimes dangerous world of the Cross.  Jon meets and befriends a wonderful gallery of eccentric and vividly drawn characters, and learns a lot about life and love before being drafted into the army at the age of 18, in the midst of WWII.

Rose's writing isn't as luminous as in Peppercorn Days, but it is wonderfully engaging and vivid.  Like Denton Welch, Jon Rose was a vulnerable young man with an amazing sense of empathy for both objects and animals.  He's less adept at understanding people than Welch, but his experiences related in this book move him towards a more mature understanding of human nature.

This is a funny, wise, heartbreaking book -- a brilliant depiction of a rare young individual growing into himself in a long-lost but memorable time and place.