Childhood

'Childhood is about more than reliving trauma-it shows us how literature can offer a pathway to survival, if not redemption. Shannon Burns demonstrates how to soldier on when all hope and dignity are lost.' * Tyson Yunkaporta * 'Childhood is raw and authentic. It tells a truth that can only come from being lived.' * Justin Kurzel * 'Childhood is honest, confronting and lovely. We don't hear enough from the hearts of poor children, and rarely like this. Shannon's demonstration of the power of words is inspiring. And it reminds us all that we should never underestimate a boy with a fire inside.' * Paul Kennedy * 'Childhood reads like Gorky and Tolstoy-not nudging but shoving the reader headfirst towards hard-won epiphanies with a brutal yet transcendent urgency.' * Alice Pung * 'Moving and inspiring...What makes this book truly exceptional is the power and perceptiveness of the writing. It's a marvellous work.' * Mark Rubbo, Readings * '[E]xquisitely written...I haven't read a memoir with such a savage, tender, idiosyncratic narratorial voice - one that at once embodies and eviscerates toxic masculinity - since [Craig Sherborne's] Hoi Polloi and Muck...Fathoms-deep hurt and anger seethe beneath the surface of meticulously controlled, forensically observed prose.' * InDaily * 'That the boy depicted in Shannon Burns's nightmarish memoir survived to write it at the age of forty reflects no credit on society or on those around him. His persistence seems remarkable, given the world he entered...Never is the [book's] tone self-pitying or sentimental...The narrative is admirably cool...It would be impertinent to analyse or patronise the boy so compellingly memorialised in this uncompromising book. Any vindication or overcoming was all his own work.' * Australian Book Review *