'To Become a Whale tells the story of 13-year-old Sam Keogh, whose mother has died. Sam has to learn how to live with his silent, hitherto absent father, who decides to make a man out of his son by taking him to work at Tangalooma, then the largest whaling station in the southern hemisphere. What follows is the devastatingly beautiful story of a gentle boy trying to make sense of the terrible reality of whaling and the cruelty and alienation of his new world, the world of men.
'Set around Moreton Island and Noosa in 1961, To Become a Whale is an extraordinarily vivid and haunting novel that reads like an instant classic of Australian literature. There are echoes of Craig Silvey, Favel Parrett, Tim Winton and Randolph Stow in this moving, transformative and very Australian novel.' (Publication summary)
Dedication: For Charlie and Henry
Epigraph: 'There's no eel so small but it hopes to become a whale.' -German Proverb
'I have heard it said that men are reluctant to become fathers because we haven’t yet finished being children ourselves. There’s quite a bit of truth to that, I suspect. But, then, how do any of us become men? Who teaches us? What are the rites of passage that lead us into manhood? These are the questions Brisbane writer Ben Hobson seems to be contemplating in his moving debut novel, To Become a Whale.' (Introduction)
'I have heard it said that men are reluctant to become fathers because we haven’t yet finished being children ourselves. There’s quite a bit of truth to that, I suspect. But, then, how do any of us become men? Who teaches us? What are the rites of passage that lead us into manhood? These are the questions Brisbane writer Ben Hobson seems to be contemplating in his moving debut novel, To Become a Whale.' (Introduction)
