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Back Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Save as PDF
Chapters (21)
  1. Cover
  2. Bio (Robin Klein)
  3. Bio (Simmone Howell) / Also By Robin Klein
  4. Title Page
  5. All the Bells Rangby Simmone Howell
  6. Dedication
  7. Came Back to Show You I Could Fly
  8. Chapter 1
  9. Chapter 2
  10. Chapter 3
  11. Chapter 4
  12. Chapter 5
  13. Chapter 6
  14. Chapter 7
  15. Chapter 8
  16. Chapter 9
  17. Chapter 10
  18. Chapter 11
  19. Chapter 12
  20. POSTSCRIPT
  21. Text Classics

There would never be any winged horses plunging splendidly from the sky to land at your feet and carry you away from things not to be borne. That was something you had to learn to do all by yourself.

I think of Robin Klein’s novels as literary hymns to the nowhereness of adolescence. Seymour and Angie attempt to form a country of two, but the real world intrudes again and again. Other people matter and no one action exists without consequence.

I don’t know where my copy of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood ended up, but Came Back to Show You I Could Fly has travelled with me for all these years. I’m so happy see it in print again to be cherished by a new generation of readers. I find myself returning to it, not just for nostalgia but for inspiration at times when my own narratives are stuck or overcooked—when I’ve lost sight of what a coming-of-age novel should be. Klein reminds me that drama can be stealthy, that characters can be bigger than their stories, that they can live off the page and in your imagination, and you can love them and hope the world will be sweet to them.

1 ‘Oeuvre’ was one of the words in my black-and-red notebook.

2 Say a Little Prayer (1993)

3 A line from the song ‘From the Inside’ by Artie Wayne

Dedication

For Phoebe

Came Back to Show You I Could Fly

Chapter 1

Seymour had been awake since sunrise and was watching the stumbling hands of the clock so he could legitimately get out of bed. Seven-fifteen to the exact second was when Thelma began her day, and she’d made it clear that his being there mustn’t interfere with her routine. She’d given him the back room, which wasn’t really a proper one, just a small fibro-cement extension tacked on to the kitchen. Summer clung like thick cellulose wrapping to its iron roof, and even at this early hour he was sweating. Yesterday’s stored heat undulated from the concrete yard outside, and he lay in clammy pyjamas and outstared the clock. At ten minutes past seven he sprang thankfully out of bed and went into the kitchen to make Thelma a morning cup of tea. He wasn’t being ingratiating—it was just something his mother had told him to do before she left, and Seymour had a quiet and biddable nature.