We Didn’t Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough

Title: We Didn’t Think It Through

Author: Gary Lonesborough

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Allen and Unwin  

Published: 4^th July 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 304

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: From the author of the award-winning The Boy from the Mish, comes a compelling coming-of-age YA novel about sixteen-year-old Jamie Langton finding his future and navigating the challenges of racism, family and friendship in a small Australian town.

The thought comes to me: This is how I die. Dally is going to lose control and crash us into a pole or a house and we will be killed on impact.

The justice system characterises Jamie Langton as a ‘danger to society’, but he’s just an Aboriginal kid, trying to find his way through adolescence.

Jamie lives in Dalton’s Bay with Aunty Dawn and Uncle Bobby. He spends his downtime hanging out with his mates, Dally and Lenny. Mark Cassidy and his white mates – the Footy Heads – take every opportunity they can to bully Jamie and his friends. On Lenny’s last night in town before moving to Sydney, after another episode of racist harassment, Jamie, Dally and Lenny decide to retaliate by vandalising Mark Cassidy’s car. And when they discover the keys are in the ignition… Dally changes the plan. Soon they are all in Mark Cassidy’s stolen car cruising through town, aiming to take it for a quick spin, then dump it.

But it’s a bad plan. And as a consequence, Jamie ends up in the youth justice system where he must find a way to mend his relationships with himself, his friends, his family and his future.

~*~

Jamie Langton is an Aboriginal kid, who has been removed from his parents and is living with extended family, his Aunty Dawn and Uncle Bobby. His brother, Trey, took off a few years ago, so now it’s just them. They live in a place called the Valley, considered to be the wrong side of town – at least, that’s how it is talked about and jhow Jamie describes it, and how it is distinctly separate from the other side of town – all seen through Jamie’s eyes and understanding of how the world around him works. Jamie is good at school, and he has goals and promise, and he likes to hang out with his friends, playing sport, and trying to work towards getting out of where he is and showing society that he is more than the preconceptions they have about him. Jamie’s about to enter another year of high school without his friends – Lenny is moving to Sydney, and Dally is going into an apprenticeship instead of continuing to year twelve – so they all have different goals and ways of going about their lives. But Dally, Jamie, and Lenny are often targeted by Mark Cassidy and his friends, even when Jamie and his friends are doing their own thing, minding their own business – Mark is rich and seems to think he owns the town they live and, and never faces consequences for what he does, unlike kids like Jamie. When Mark pushes them too far, Jamie, Lenny, and Dally retaliate – and steak Mark’s car. Jamie thinks they’re just going to take it for a quick spin and dump it, but Dally pushes things too far – and the three boys are arrested by the local cops who know everyone, and Jamie ends up in juvenile detention – all because of a plan that he didn’t think through.

As Jamie spends time in the centre, he starts to believe what everyone tells him – that he is a bad person, that his trauma informed what he did, that he can’t change. Everyone, that is, except his family – Aunty Dawn and Trey, and Shae, an Aboriginal youth worker who takes an interest in Jamie and his writing abilities as she tries to help him talk about what he is going through. Other youth workers try to get him involved in games in between the routine of the youth centre and as Jamie goes between the different coloured blocks of the centre, but it is Shae who gets through to Jamie. I felt for Jamie – he wanted to fit in and please friends, but at the same time, he also didn’t want to be defined by his race and racial stereotypes, he knew he could be more and I wanted him to become the best he could be. I could see that Dally and then later on, some of the boys in the centre led him astray. Going along with some of the things he did felt like an act of survival – as though Jamie felt if he didn’t, something would go wrong again. And I guess like a lot of teens, he didn’t always think about the consequences of what he did, or even what he did – the powerful thing about Jamie though, was that he recognised this and this will speak volumes to teen readers. Through Jamie the book acknowledges that kids make mistakes and that the consequences aren’t always fair – that sometimes the people who are more at fault might get a different punishment or consequence to others. It also deals with the way preconceptions and assumptions, and racist thinking and related issues can inform how the law asserts itself. I liked the contrast of Shae with some of the other screws, and one in particular, Alex.

Where many of them seemed to just be part of the system and it felt like they didn’t take an interest either way, Alex was downright cruel. His cruelty bled through immensely, and his words were harsh. Alex was one of the people who let his feelings and thoughts show in a blatant and dark way. He vocalised his thoughts, he denigrated Jamie, and degraded him, and I could see how his words affected Jamie, to the point where he believed them for a little while. The foil to this was Shae, who did everything she could to support Jamie, and I think she was my favourite character. I liked that she was understanding and creative – her love of poetry was something I connected with and I was cheering for her as she helped Jamie, and I was cheering for him as he fought to show he wasn’t who Alex said he was. These key characters, along with the peripheral characters – both inmates and staff, showed that, I think, there will always be a range of personalities in all areas of society, and the important people in somewhere like Kinston where Jamie is are the ones who try to support kids like Jamie, who do what they can to be there for them. Who make them believe in themselves, and this is why I saw Shae as such an important character. It showed that even in the darkest of places, there can be compassion somewhere.

I liked the combination of poetry – free verse poetry – mixed in with the prose, from the second part onwards. It was useful when Jamie’s voice was reflecting on the monotony of the daily routine, which never changed, or when he was thinking about things that meant a lot to him, like his Aunty Dawn. And because we saw the world through Jamie’s eyes, the language worked well – it allowed another perspective to have a voice, and to be understood. To allow Jamie to work through his trauma and everything he had been through, it had to rely on how he saw the world and worked well. Hearing a diverse voice, an Indigenous voice looking at how the justice system disproportionately affects kids like Jamie and takes a look at what they can experience. It’s not nice, and I hoped Jamie would be able to speak up at some stage. But the most important thing was that Jamie worked to overcome what people thought he could be. This is a powerful story about empowerment as well as identity and what it means to push forward, work against adversity, and show the world that you are more than what they assume you are based on stereotypes. It’s for kids like Jamie, Indigenous kids, and all young adult readers to understand what this world is like for the people who are in this world. I hope readers enjoy this book, and either learn something new or find something they can relate to in Gary’s new book.