Tristan Bancks, Scar Town, Puffin, August 2023, 242 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780143791812
Will and his family have always lived in Scarborough. Indeed, the town bears their name as they were founders. However, the town is not the same as it was when it was established as the old town is now below the surface of the dam that inundated it. As the dam wall develops a leak and parts of the old town begin emerging, mysterious things start to happen. Will and his friends Juno and Dar find themselves caught up in a frightening and threatening situation after they enter one of the houses that’s starting to emerge. The results of this escapade have far-reaching ramifications, especially for Will who finds many of the people he knows best, including family members, are not what they seem.
Bancks has a stated mission to re-engage readers and take them away from screens. He trusts his targeted readership to cope with slightly scary plots that do, however, resolve themselves in a positive way. This book does just that. The child characters in the book (who are aged 12 and 13), face dangers and challenges that test them both physically and emotionally as well as testing their loyalty to each other. Will, the first-person narrator of the story, also wrestles with an ethical dilemma of doing what he considers to be the right thing as opposed to what Juno, always the leader of the group, wants. Will’s father had been the town policeman but had disappeared years before when Will was only five, one of a number of people who had simply vanished from the town. Bancks challenges his readers to consider, as Will himself has to, whether or not some of his actions and decisions are the right ones.
All the characters show development and the interactions and relationships between them change too, as they cope with the situations that arise. Even Juno, who always insists on being called J, softens and recognizes that the decisions and suggestions of others may be valid. The children, as characters, are all given agency.
A plaque in the town dedicated to Will’s father, describes him as brave and gentle, a seeming contradiction. Will comes to recognize that people, including his friends, can be both. The children also come to recognise that their parents can be supportive, may well have worries and concerns of their own and, in the case of Juno and Dar, they realise that their father, in particular, can change.
The old town and the dam brood across the town and the action of the novel like malign characters and most of the scary episodes, and the build up of suspense, take place around the dam and old town.
This is an adventure novel about friendship, loyalty, bravery (and what constitutes bravery). It will be enjoyed by readers in late primary and early secondary years.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
