So says Thelma, temporary host to eleven-year-old Seymour Kerley. Timid Seymour has been posted at Thelma’s in the inner city while his parents negotiate (or fail to negotiate) custody of him. Seymour knows he has no place at Thelma’s. He suspects he has no place anywhere. He is accustomed to things being temporary and he dreams of one day having a room of his own that he can fill with desirable objects—‘cheerful bedspreads, desks with maps painted on them, carved teak chests’. It’s the flagging end of school holidays and he’s under strict instructions not to leave the house, but he does, and it is on a botched excursion into the mean streets that Seymour comes across the magnetic Angie, a twenty-year-old op-shop queen living in a backyard bungalow (‘completely self-contained’). Though opposite personality types—Seymour rarely speaks and Angie has no filter—the pair form a fast and fragile friendship. Angie invites Seymour into her world, a magical melange of shopping sprees, dream-house-hunting, public singing, race days and bus rides to mysterious hospitals. She is a fabulous fabulist, a grunge Holly Golightly, and Seymour is smitten.

Anyone who wore satin and silver lace and black nail polish, anyone who had a little flying horse tattooed on one shoulder, could reach heights undreamed of by other people.

In Angie’s company, Seymour’s life expands. Doors that had been closed are opened—but the problem of open doors is that everything else flies in. Came Back to Show You I Could Fly is written from Seymour’s viewpoint, but additional text within the narrative helps to fill in the gaps of Angie’s story. Notes from Angie’s mother to her daughter’s old friend; notes from Angie to her doctor and to her boyfriend; lists and hopeful job applications gradually reveal that despite Angie’s confident exterior, she’s in a troubled state:

In savings a/c $11.50

In Jas’s a/c? (Musn’t touch!)

Dole cheque due Tuesday

Sickness benefit? Wangle it somehow?

HARD TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The nuances of Angie’s situation are drawn carefully and respectfully. We can’t fail to see Angie’s humanity and, by extension, the humanity of all society’s outliers. The story, which starts off as buddy comedy, then looks like it might be moving into a championing-the-underdog type of story becomes a real and vivid exploration of what it means to be young and powerless.

Came Back to Show You I Could Fly was awarded both the CBCA Book of the Year and the Human Rights Award for Literature. The metaphor of flight and maybe-impossible dreams pervades the novel: it’s in the title,3 and Angie’s tattoo, and the pilot’s badge Seymour saves for her. These lines near the end of the novel sum up for me what everyone has to learn in the passage from child to adult: