Strange Objects
The CBCA Award-winning bestseller
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
The 25th anniversary edition of this landmark novel, in which a chilling modern mystery is entwined with one of Australia's most brutal and intriguing historical atrocities. From one of Australia's most awarded writers, Gary Crew, with a foreword and cover illustration by Shaun Tan.
On 4 June 1629, the Dutch vessel Batavia struck uncharted rocks off the West Australian coast. By the time help arrived, over 120 men, women and children had met their deaths - not in the sea, but murdered by two fellow survivors, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom.
Nearly 400 years later, Steven Messenger discovers gruesome relics from that wreck. Four months later he disappears without a trace. Where is Messenger? Is his disappearance linked to the relics? Someone knows ... somewhere ...
'this stunningly original work defies easy categorization as it spins dual story lines into one spellbinding yarn ... Crew tantalizes to the very end, leaving readers to speculate enthusiastically on the riddles he craftily leaves unsolved. His tale will electrify his audience' - Publishers Weekly
'Strange Objects will continue to tease and perplex readers of all ages long after it has been read' - Australian Book Review
'A supernatural mystery of a high order' - Kirkus Reviews
'The past is alive in us all, and will test our humanity to the full' - Marion Halligan
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winner of Australia's 1991 Children's Book of the Year award, this stunningly original work defies easy categorization as it spins dual story lines into one spellbinding yarn. Crew brings to life the land and peoples of the desert shores of Western Australia, a setting that will prove exotic to most Americans. He starts his novel with a bang: a note from an archeologist introduces documents she's been sent by a recently vanished 16-year-old named Steven Messenger, who had gained some notoriety when he'd found a cast-iron pot containing a 17th-century Dutchman's journal and a mummified human hand bearing a now-missing ring. The journal tells the story of Wouter Loos, a sailor accused of barbarous crimes and cast upon the ocean along with a teenage killer; Crew unfolds Loos's narrative with Messenger's as a seamless and unpredictable blend of mystery, history, anthropology and science fiction. The first of many shocks is in store when Messenger turns out to be not the typical YA nice-guy teen protagonist, but the reincarnation (or the extraterrestrial clone?) of the supernatural psychopath who so chillingly dominates Loos's diary. Crew tantalizes to the very end, leaving readers to speculate enthusiastically on the riddles he craftily leaves unsolved. His tale will electrify his audience. Ages 10-14.
