The Shark Net: Memories and Murder

I picked this up expecting an interesting true crime work, not realizing that the vast majority of the book is a pretty straightforward memoir of growing up in Australia in the '50s and '60s. The book starts very confusingly, with the author observing the court proceedings of a murder trial, only to flash back to his early youth. Drewe was a young child when his father was assigned to the remote Western Australian city of Perth to be a branch manager for the Dunlop rubber company. The first half of the book is about his childhood, and as far as memoirs go, it's well done. I'm not a big fan of the genre, but Drewe is nicely selective in recounting his dysfunctional home life and is very adept at retelling the awkwardness of his first crush. his childhood is not that dissimilar from that of upper middle-class American kid of the same era. His father is more or less a company drone, and Dunlop business pervades every aspect of his personality and the family life. His mother is overprotective and retreats into religion with sometimes eerie intensity. Both parents were emotionally distant and unexpressive. The raison d'etre for the book is that in the years Drewe moved from childhood to being an adult, a serial killer was stalking the suburbs near his home and Drewe's life intersected with the case in many ways. His father was friends with a policeman who would come over to their house and discussed the case behind closed doors. One of the murders is committed with a friend's garden axe. There's a peeping tom on the loose who may or may not be connected to the killings who late one night scares Drewe's mother by prowling out back. More ominously, one of the last victims is of one of Drewe's friends. But the coup de grace is that the killer turns out to be someone known to the family, someone Drewe even spoke to as a child. While the murders form a dark backdrop to his childhood, they are never dwelt on in any great depth, nor is Drewe particularly interested in recounting the case. That said, there are a few sections where he writes from within the killer, imagining his life. On the whole though, until the very end it's pretty thin about why someone would be killing random people on and off with knives, axes, guns, and even hit and run. It's a curious mix of a book, a very well-written memoir with slices of darkness sprinkled in.

I really liked this book, it was incredibly easy to read, not to mention enjoyable. A great little lesson in a piece of Australian history that is seemingly unknown by Generation Y (I'm 17, and had no previous knowledge of this tale), Robert Drewe uses his writing talent to the nth degree in a book which covers the funny and the saddening. I can recommend this book to anyone, more so overseas readers who want to discover a bit of Australian 'culture', if that's the word to use (probably not, but you know what i mean!).

The Shark Net is one of those rare memoirs that succeed in being almost as haunting to the reader as the events it describes are to the author himself. It is Robert Drewe's story of his childhood and early adulthood from the late `40s to the early `60s in the Western Australian city of Perth, then as now a city defined by a deep awareness of its geographic isolation. The story that unfolds bears some similarity to John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Both books elegantly weave a tale of real-life mayhem into descriptions of the social fabric of an isolated city. The difference is that Berendt's tale of the anachronistic charms of Savannah, Georgia is far more light-hearted than Drewe's grim account. The Shark Net is built around a series of random serial murders that erupt into the narrative to create an overpowering sense of menace. It is also a much more personal book, in which Drewe tries to confront his memories of these murders and other tragedies that intruded into his formative years in sunny Perth. The killer and his crimes directly touched on Drewe's life at several points, not least of which is that one of the random victims is a close boyhood friend, despite it being Drewe who had once unwittingly met the killer. Drewe also re-creates his family life, but not wholly lovingly. He documents with painful understatement the emotional inhibitions of his parents, and the decline of their marriage. His father was an emotionally unexpressive man whose few passions include a near religious dedication to his employer, the Dunlop rubber company. His only expressed reaction to the news that his son is about to become a teenage father is concern about the company's reaction. The book ends with Drewe being surprised by his eagerness to leave provincial Perth to work on a big city newspaper in Melbourne. This is riveting book, that will grip Australian readers and those overseas. Its tone is of a man who in middle age is now compelled to look back on events with a mixture of sadness and greater understanding. It is quite complex in structure, with several flashes forward in time and interludes into the mind of the killer, but uses a clear prose style that keeps the story moving along effortlessly. It is also beautifully evocative of a time and a place. This is the book that Robert Drewe had to write for himself, and we should all be grateful that he has done so.

There have been some great "teenager growing up" books - and I thought this funny/sometimes sad book is a stand out in a very strong genre.I know Robert Drewe is one of Australia's best, and best liked writers. It turns out he lived what seems an ordinary childfhood, in quite extraordinary settings. His father was the bombastic company man for Dunlop in West Australia - a regional big cheese, odious but tasty. That brings young Drewe into contact with interesting people such as the tennis stars Dunlop sponsors, like Hoad and Rosewall.And also with a serial killer who was knocking off Drewe's friends, while working for his dad. Hell of a back drop.The young Drewe is hardly the sensitive youth.He has the balanced perspective of a 16year old male who understands there is no more exciting prospect in life than copping his first feel.Maybe that gets to what I like most about this book -- Drewe's memories and insights of the ordinary things most of us recognise.Sort of thing where you laugh out loud, look down and realise, hey that's also a knife he stuck in your gut.It's a very enjoyable, satisfying book.He uses the serial killer skilfully to give it a wonderful construction.