“It was as though he’d been marooned on a desert island, and someone had come along and rescued him in a little boat. Promised to take him to safety. Only that person proved to know nothing about navigation, had taken him instead into rough wild seas . . . ”

This is a well-written, sensitive, and affecting Australian novel about an unlikely friendship between a timid eleven-year-old boy and a troubled twenty-year-old girl. It’s the summer holidays, and Seymour has been banished to the tiny home of the aging Thelma, a woman his mother knows from church. According to Seymour, his mum delights in self-generated drama and her victim status. Currently she’s concocted a story that Seymour’s drinking, gambling ne’er-do-well father, from whom she’s estranged, wants to abduct her son. Engaged in packing up her flat in preparation for a move and a new job situation, she places Seymour with Thelma for a few weeks. He has been ordered to stay indoors all day in the sizzling heat and upgrade his schoolwork while Thelma is at work. Although he’s a compliant, obedient sort, Seymour is so bored he climbs the back gate and goes out into Victoria Road, a bustling street with many shops. To escape some boys who harass him, he rushes through an open gate into another backyard along the same alleyway that Thelma’s property backs onto. There, the lively—and to Seymour—gorgeous Angie Easterbrook is sunbathing. At the girl’s bidding, Seymour quickly makes himself useful in her filthy little flat: preparing coffee and selecting earrings for her while she showers. And so their friendship begins.

Over the next several days, Seymour is Angie’s constant companion, and the two go on outings: to see the mansion-lined street where Angie eventually plans to live with her boyfriend Jas, to the park, the racetrack, and to a strained lunch meeting with Angie’s mother at the Easterbrook home in the suburbs. Angie talks non-stop to Seymour. She has big plans for a flower shop or perhaps a business that sells handicrafts and gifts. She goes about dressed in gaudy, outlandish outfits, each of which she has a name for—“Susan-Jane” for a pink, girly number, for example, and “Neptunia” for a dress that shimmers with the colours of the sea. Several times Seymour accompanies Angie to a “hospital” where the girl is in a program to receive special medication. It’s for “gastro” issues, she tells him, and the naïve boy, bedazzled by her and thrilled at having any friend at all, takes her at her word. But Angie’s periodic “flu” episodes, her dead-to-the-world sleeps, the disorder and squalor she lives in, her shiftiness, and her obvious estrangement from her parents, younger siblings, and best friend all point the reader to her addiction. It seems likely that what she is receiving in her “program” is methadone. (Author Robin Klein provides Angie’s backstory by sprinkling the narrative with letters from Angie’s family and friends, extracts about plans and debts Angie’s diary, one of the girl’s pitiful job applications—which testifies only to her unreliability as an employee, and other documentary “evidence” of the chaos of the young woman’s life.)

In the end, Seymour’s friendship with Angie represents his coming of age. The bats are “released from the compartments of his mind” assailing “his whole being with their black fluttering” and “all the elaborate pretences he’d so carefully built” are no longer useful. The person Seymour has placed his trust in is not trustworthy and cannot navigate her own life, never mind help him with his. The boy makes a decision to act to help his friend, and the reader follows along with interest to see how it goes.

In spite of the serious subject matter, Klein’s book has many light touches. Her characterization is strong, and the author’s depiction of Angie’s family’s difficulties in coping with the girl are realistically portrayed. While Klein doesn’t provide a “happy” ending exactly, she does end on a note of hopefulness.

Recommended for readers 12 and up, who like character-driven novels. ( )

I was trying to think of the author of this book the other day and I saw it in my school's library!

So glad. I've been wanting to review this book. I really liked this book when I read it in high school. I thought it was a pretty important book. It discussed drug use (without explicit examples, only references) in an age-appropriate way. I was a little bit older than I needed to be to read it, so I didn't enjoy it as much, but I thought it was really accessible.

I liked the characters, I liked the narrative voice despite the young age of the narrator. I thought this novel was well-structured and provides kids with an accessible book to read about and discuss drugs, drug use and its effects in a safe, contained environment.

I think this is one of Robin Klein's earlier books, and you can tell that her writing style is not as evolved. I enjoyed this, though, and think it's a solid effort for a novel. 3.5 stars from me. c: ( )

Came Back to Show You I Could Fly is a coming of age story. It proves that you can over come anything you want and that you can gain more and more self respect and confidence. ( )

Robin Klein is an author I remember from my younger years, spending hours between my school's library and the local one. I remember that I read a few of her books, the only problem being that aside from Hating Alison Ashley, I couldn't remember any of the titles of the ones I read and when I look at Klein's list of MG/YA works I'm not sure if the titles seem familiar because I read them or just because I saw them on the shelves a lot. So when I came across (as I do!) Came Back To Show You I Could Fly in one of my secondhand store haunts for a dollar, I thought why not?

Seymour is eleven years old and stuck with a friend of his mother's for the summer holidays. While escaping some unfriendly kids in the neighbourhood, Seymour finds himself in the yard of 20-year-old Angela, by whom he is immediately captivated. She brings colour into his dull, boring world just by her presence. But there's a lot more going on in Angie's world than Seymour realises.

This novel shows a different view of drug addiction from the eyes of a naive young boy. Seymour is smitten by Angie but he also notices her mood swings, her strange sleeping habits where she seems 'sick', her tense relationship with her family and her erratic personality. It takes Seymour a little while to realise what's really going on in Angie's world and when he does, his personal development is outstanding. He shows the courage needed to confront someone who uses drugs as Angie does, and then the progress made in his own life, read in Postscript, is heart warming. Its as if his friendship with Angie, even as unstable as she was, gave him the courage to be a more active participant in his own life. Remarkable.

3.5 stars ( )

Genre Bildungsroman
Reading age 12 to 15

Awards:
Human Rights Medal for Literature, Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, 1989. CBCA Book of the Year Award, Older Readers, 1990. COOL Award winner (Secondary Readers) 1992

Annotation:
Seymour is a lonely little boy, a victim of his mother's paranoia. When he is sent to stay with a fussy guardian he meets the dazzling Angie. Theirs is an unusual friendship but each help the other-Angie prompts confidence in Seymour and in turn Seymour helps Angie confront the truth about her addiction and circumstances. ( )