Tomorrow, When the War Began

Tomorrow, When the War Began
John Marsden
Scholastic paperback reprint; 2006 (1993).
304p. first reading.

It’s not every day that I find myself reading an Australian novel for young adults written in the early 90’s, much less in a single afternoon. The book was certainly short (its target audience is not well-known for its attention span, after all), but even if it had been longer I should likely have kept at it until finished. I first heard about Tomorrow on Friday, bought it on Saturday, and read it today. It’s the first in a substantial series, fortunately, so there’s much more to which to look forward.

John Marsden, of whom I had never heard before (and about whom I still know nothing), sat down sixteen years ago, put pen to paper, and did exactly the sort of thing I’ve wanted someone to do for ages now. I was worried that I’d have to do it myself, and fail completely in the process, but it turns out that there’s a highly competent and wildly successful set of works already in existence, so the cup, as it were, has passed.

The premise of Tomorrow and of the books that follow it is simple and appalling, and more than a little reminiscent of some other things – particularly movies – that came before it. A group of teenagers go into the Australian bush for a long spell of camping and tense relational awkwardness, and it all goes down much as you’d expect. Different sorts of people are well-represented in their group: one of the girls is good-natured but fiercely competitive; one of the guys treats life with profound unseriousness but has unsuspected depths; one girl is deeply religious; one guy has trouble living up to his parents’ expectations. There are others, too, who fit various types. The narrator, Ellie, is the sort of faintly intellectual everywoman one would hope to have as a recorder of the events that follow. Given to generally honest introspection, uncertainty about her feelings, a budding sexual awareness, and (unfortunately) some typically teenaged philosophical musings, she stands at the center of a group that will be forced to accept both her strengths and her weaknesses in the face of the hardships they will shortly have to endure.

For all is not well in Australia, though the kids don’t really know it. They’re like anyone, really; they see angry faces on the news, and hear misremembered rumours in the hallways at school, but there their interest in global affairs ends and the practical realities of life in their small farming community come immovably to the forefront. Their trip into the bush comes at an opportune time, but it does not isolate them from the events that unfold in their absence. They see unusual ships docked in a distant and typically deserted bay. They are awakened one night by the sound of hundreds of jet fighters roaring low across the sky. The fighters fly with no lights. They see smoke on the horizon where smoke should not be. They begin to worry.

They’re right to worry: upon their return to their homes, they discover that much of the nation has been conquered in a swift and utterly unexpected invasion by a unnamed foreign power. Their friends and family are held in a prison camp. Their pets have starved to death in the absence of people to feed them. No news can be obtained, the world stands by in hesitant uncertainty, and there are men with guns everywhere with orders to shoot on sight. In the face of such a shocking shift in reality, one could forgive these children for collapsing in confusion or hiding in a basement or surrendering outright. But they don’t do any of that. They choose to fight.

It’s all pretty similar to Red Dawn in concept, anyway, but thankfully without the elements that made that movie so absurd. Things were unreasonably easy for the teenagers in the conquered America of Red Dawn – they wipe out hundreds of enemy soldiers, and armoured columns, and airfields, and so on – but it is not so for the teenagers of Tomorrow. They get hurt. They make foolish mistakes. They strive for concealment above all else, only fighting when they have to, and at that with great regret. There’s nothing jingoistic about any of this; learning that they have actually killed several people in one of their frantic attempts to escape capture brings some of them to the brink of madness (though they recover quickly enough), and some of their tactical thinking about the disposition of the occupying force is informed by their sympathy with anyone who’d be living in a situation desperate enough to make them want to invade Australia in the first place. It tends towards the other extreme from jingoism at times, in fact, what with Ellie’s occasional musings about how good and evil are just human constructs, but the series and the war are young and I have hope that she’ll see enough horror to change her mind about that by the time it’s all wrapped up.

In spite of its relatively infrequent philosophical deficiencies and the fact of it having been written for the 12+ age group, this is still a series of books about modern teenagers waging an increasingly vicious guerrilla war against a superior occupying force. I am entirely in favour of such a literary venture, and it would have to be a heck of a lot worse before I’d begin to look upon it with real concern or reservation.

I would, however, hesitate in recommending the books for unsullied young people – even those who are 12 (or plus) years of age – for the characters are modern and basically secular teenagers who are as aware of (and interested in) the wicked trappings of our world as one would expect. Jokes about sex and drugs abound, though they are not especially graphic, and the occasional blasphemy is uttered. The book is one of those rare ones that’s best read by those older than its target audience and in appreciation of the execution of its concept rather than of the various incidentals involved in that execution. I will quite eagerly follow the series through to its conclusion and beyond, and I look forward with warm anticipation to the just-announced film adaptation. It’s unfortunate that it should be gestating at the same time as the now-being-cast remake of Red Dawn, but I think it should be sufficiently different to stand on its own.