What is it like to be an average Australian teenager, growing up in Melbourne? David Metzenthen’s Jarvis 24 is a teenage fiction novel satiric to adolescence, dealing with the complication of growing up, amidst a vivid and poignant Melbourne setting. The story places the reader in the mind of high school student, Marc Jarvis, who is a worrywart and tends to lose things. He got himself a one week work experience placement at Gateway Auto, a local second-hand car yard owned by Vincent Gates because he wants to get to know Electra, a freakishly fast and beautiful sprinter from Broome, who he first saw, walking out of the used car yard. His mundane student life soon became livelier as he made friends with Mikey, who is a gay and had run away from home in Queensland; and Belinda, a single mother in the used car yard. As he grapples with the complexity of the world beyond home and school, he finds himself instalove with Electra while trying to find a resolution to the painful memories of the loss of his first girlfriend who had died three years back.
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The wideness, narrowness, or downright obtuseness of his view is what makes Marc Jarvis, the main protagonist in the story, go off on tangents. He would not emerge as the young man that he is, without the influence of those around him. The characters of Travis, Mikey, Belinda, Vincent Gates, and Electra all plays an essential role in helping him to make sense of the world around him and the challenges that he
The wideness, narrowness, or downright obtuseness of his view is what makes Marc Jarvis, the main protagonist in the story, go off on tangents. He would not emerge as the young man that he is, without the influence of those around him. The characters of Travis, Mikey, Belinda, Vincent Gates, and Electra all plays an essential role in helping him to make sense of the world around him and the challenges that he