Anyone who's read anything I've written here in the past ten years knows that I admire one thing about Dickens: nothing. A chore to read at best, an excruciatingly twee sentimental boor at least, he's famous wherever English is spoken because he makes average people feel smart, and smart people feel godlike, for "getting" his stories and their layers. To me, that's like congratulating yourself for knowing tomatoes are fruits but having the sense not to put them in fruit salad.

<I>Low Expectations</i> stars a teen, one with multivalent social and physical challenges, whose favorite book is <I>Great Expectations</i>. So coming of age, Dickens veneration, and Australian setting. Not an immediate fit for my US-centric, anti-Chuckles the Dick self, then.

I got within an ace of giving it five stars just for being raucously its ownself.

You who belong to the Church of Chuckles know he's fond of the sesquipedalian sentence, the orotund ekphrasis, the hifalutin verbiage. Quite why Devon, our PoV character, loves him, then is Dickensianly (in the "stop-hitting-me-with-the-message" sense) clear. He's "hard of speaking," a beautiful little Dickensian (in the best sense of fulfilling a need for a phrase that no one knew was there except him) creation for someone who simply doesn't want to speak much. Better not to let anyone in on his secret: he is a smart, observant, sensitive guy stuck in a world that just has no place for that kind of time-wasting, but expects people to be hard, both -working and -hearted, to make it in their working-class world. Devon feels safe in his hidey-hole with the special needs kids, he refers to it as the "spaz Gulag" and now let's talk about lanuguage. Diametrically opposite to Dickens, Devon's narrative voice is choppy and frequently heavy on the "worty dirds," as a teacher of mine called them. He absolutely has no respect for anyone who isn't worthy in his eyes, including himself. For the 2020s US audience this can lead to pursed lips and furrowed brows. Either check your fifty-years-later, wildly different culture expectations of politeness at the door, or don't pick the book up...and I straongly encourage the former choice. The alchemy of the story is, like Devon's favorite story, in the way the entire experience of reading it subverts the thoughts and expectations you started out with so often that the wonder is you emerge with any expectations left.

This bitter draft of gall and wormwood comes about because our hard-of-speaking narrator learns a truly life-changing secret about the mother he disrespects and denigrates. As she's raised him by herself, I don't think you need a lot of brainpower to figure out what it's about. I will say that it didn't seem hugely surprising to me when it was revealed; I was by that time exasperated with Devon for not picking up on it before he did. What matters in this rough-tongued kid's world is keeping himself a small enough target to avoid more than the irreducible minimum of abuse and also attention. It makes him a more-than-ordinarily solipsistic adolescent. His eyes are sharp...his attention is not focused outside his self-defined sphere of defense. As he's breaking the law, he's wise to keep his thoughts from straying too far afield. Adult readers who're parents will, I'm sure, think the right thoughts about how the family-related things end up before they do.

With the laundry list of CWs, why would I rate this book so highly? Because I'm Devon's age and, even though I grew up in Texas, the culture of cruelty wasn't a lot different there. Instead of someone telling a loudly pruriently foulmouthed and prejudiced tale of the modern day in order to shock and appall and titillate, this story recounts the way it was in that time and place, and does so with clarity and purpose. The world was what it was, but Devon is a work in progress, and by the end of the book the Devon we met is appreciably more adult in the postive ways than I ever expected him to be.

But for all that, peruse the CWs and make sure you're not going to pass out when they come to pass because they all do.

Low Expectations by Stuart Everly-Wilson is quirky, offensive and hilarious! I absolutely loved this story set in Sydney during the 1970's. Devon, a crippled teenage boy who is sometimes "hard of speaking", tries to navigate his way through his difficult teenage years with the help of his best friend, Big Tammy. Life isn't always easy for Devon but at least he has his awesome hairstyle for company. Thanks to NetGalley and Text Publishing for my ARC.

For a boy who believes he is hard-of-speaking this certainly was quite the perspective! It's a good story to read and learn from on the power of secrets.
"I begin to record the history of it all, because if I don’t I will explode, leaving nothing to tell of me but a pile of ash. In this history I will try to leave nothing out, but I will also be careful not to incorporate any extraneous unnecessary shit. Like objectivity. Objectivity is for those who don’t have a point to make, or a side to take. There is only one side to this story and that’s mine."
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

I didn't understand anything about this book. The character was impossible to get and I didn't see where the plot was going. I was really confused all the time.

A brilliant, compelling, often funny and occasionally brutal coming-of-age story. Complex and well-drawn characters who are not always likeable, but are portrayed with nuance and empathy.

"I begin to record the history of it all, because if I don’t I will explode, leaving nothing to tell of me but a pile of ash. In this history I will try to leave nothing out, but I will also be careful not to incorporate any extraneous unnecessary shit. Like objectivity. Objectivity is for those who don’t have a point to make, or a side to take. There is only one side to this story and that’s mine.

1975, Western Sydney.
A street where neighbours keep an eye on everyone else’s business.
A boy and his mum - and a family secret, barely hidden.

Devon Destri flies under the radar. He doesn’t talk - calls himself ‘hard of speaking’ - and does nothing to correct any assumptions of his low intelligence. If no one knows otherwise, no one will expect anything of him, and maybe he won’t need to expect anything of himself. Only his fiercely loyal friend, Big Tammy, and his neighbour, Krenek, know that Great Expectations is his favourite book, or that he can read at all.

But when the chilling revelation of his mother’s past unexpectedly blows open his view of himself, and of her, Devon realises he can have great expectations after all.

First, though, he has a score to settle."

Books set in Australia with family secrets always have a soft spot in my heart.

LOW EXPECTATIONS by Stuart Everly-Wilson is quite a funny debut novel! This is a revenge story about an Australian teenage boy, Devon, who wants to get payback against his “pet bully”. Throughout the book Devon has to deal with some very heavy issues besides the bullying as he discovers his family secret. The whole book is really quite funny and there was one part with such a good pun that it made me LOL! I was rooting for Devon the whole time and I loved all the quirky side characters. It was also fun how this book was set in the 1970s. There were some really shocking parts but this is definitely a good book to pick up if you’re looking for a good hearted laugh.

"Low Expectations" is a modern counterpoint to Dicken's "Great Expectations," which is awarded with several mentions. It is a sort of Australian version of Catcher in the Rye, a coming-of-age story of a young misfit. It is told with an incredible narrative voice which never faulters in its brutally honest portrayal. Devon is daily battered by the school bullies and schools with the slow kids, the short bus kids. Devon has suffered from cerebral palsy in one of his limbs, but he's not stupid or slow. He just finds it safer to hang out there where he doesn't have to speak. It also doesn't help that he was the product of a violent rape and the whole small town thinks his mother had it coming. The two of them live in a small rundown place in a town so small and insular everyone knows everyone's business and not for the better. Part of the story is Devon coming to terms with who was guilty and how he's related in a rather creepy way. The author, Wilson, captures Devon's unique voice, his bitterness, his isolation, and his desperation. This is not that gentle growing up story. It's painfully honest, forthright, and uniquely Aussie.