Bokrecension: The passenger seat av Robert Corbet

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The passenger seat
By: Robert Corbet

“How’d you get in?”
“Your bedroom window, Wires, Just like I used to.” (p. 171)

Bones were back, and now he had a shit load of questions. He wonders if I had anything to do with his busted arm, where I was yesterday or the day before that, he also wonders who I have been rooting.
I know I can’t tell him the truth, the truth that I have been rooting his old girlfriend, Shell. Then he would kill me for sure. Instead I tell him I have been with Rosie, Rosie back from school.

The two comic reading students Jamie (Wires) and Jason (Bones) have been best friends for so long Jamie doesn’t even remember, and they would probably be all eternally, or that was at least the plan until Shell turned up. Shell is a smoking, lawbreaking a-plus reject that had been kicked out of the catholic school. She had apparently been swearing in class and been suspended, and when her mum told the principal to go to hell the transfer was made.
Shell turns the whole world upside down for Jason and Jamie as they starts to hang out with her. They get piercings and for the first time Jamie gets to “pash” with a girl. To get Shells attention the two boys starts doing graffiti. For example they wrote “NUDE” on the art classroom wall which by the way made them legendary among the students and that probably made them go on, everyone knew it was them but no one dared tell the teacher as they knew if they did they would get their asses kicked by Bones.
It’s on this way the book goes as the two boys’ struggles for her notice

Jason is the most sovereign of them; he likes to do most things on his own. Sometimes he can be gone in months without telling were he has been unlike from Jamie who every time he’s alone goes nuts.
Jamie is also totally fearless and self secure in him self so when he’s thinking about doing something we normal people would think is crazy, he just does it. That’s why when he is lonely has the courage to go to a brothel, and It is here you really can get the evidence that he is totally cool as he meats his old classmate Rosie there;
“Rosa? Rosa Carlotti?”
“Rosie”
“It’s Jay. Jamie Dwyer! From school. Remember?”
“Yeah… Jason Nichols mate”
“Wow! Do you work here?”
“Sure do.”
“But you used to be so… shy.”
“Not any more…”
If I would ended up in this position Jamie was in I would have just ran away, but he shows total calmness and starts talking to her, and after that discussion they starts having sex. Then he ends up her place talking about memories back from school.

Jamie is also the Protagonist in the book, you follow him threw high school and college, threw friends and girls, threw criminality and overdoses and of course graffiti.

The antagonist in total is Jason, at first him and Jamie are best friends reading comic books in their secret hang out, all that until the turning point of the book, and that is when Shell turns up. Then the battle of her starts between them.
Jason is the one to succeed with her first but when he goes to jail Jamie takes his chance and starts to go out with Shell, which is until Jason turns up again, out of jail and wants her back.

The book takes place in some English speaking country town but it’s never told which one, if I would take a guess I would say Australia as it’s there the books writer Robert Corbet comes from, I have also read that Robert got his ideas to the book while working with street-children from Melbourne and since he is born in 1959 the time in the book should be round 1980-2000.

This book is Robert Corbet’s debut-novel and regularly writer’s debut books are easy written, which made the book pretty simple to understand, so even though some words who were hard to understand I could comprehend the text.

The language in the book was often slang and most certainly hard for some people to understand, I did actually understand the most of it since I see a lot of English speaking movies were slang often is used.

If I would summarize this book in short it would be the Swedish proverb; “Three is one to much” Because the whole book is about two boys trying to get the same girl, and just when one of them are about to “score” the other one mess it up and like that it goes back and forward.

My opinion of the book is that it’s nice written but the story is lousy and boring, it’s like reading someone’s journal, and not like “Anne-Franks Journal”, just some regular boys thoughts and action in his life, but as Jamie said to Shell when she just has painted and used him as a model and asks for he’s opinion and he responds; “It’s better than I could do…” and this book is probably te...