It’s high time I caught up with a few reviews of some of the best NZ books I’ve read over the last couple of months, before Christmas is upon us. And by crikey there’s been some good ones: John Tomb’s Head by Stephanie Johnson, Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip and Nigel Cox’s Cowboy Dog to name just a few.

But the first in my ‘series’ is a book I was so impressed by that for the first and probably only time in my life, I was moved to find out how to option a book for film. I now know that the process is absolutely not one that anyone without huge amounts of film nouse, contacts, money, time and sanity should attempt, so it’s currently in my Seriously Daunting tray, but I live in hope that someone will take up the torch. Because this book could make a movie that, I’m convinced, would make the Billy Elliot of NZ film.

Davey Darling by Paul Shannon (Penguin, $28) has got the perfect coming-of-age plot, the perfect, nostalgic/retro setting, and the perfect male lead – an endearingly observant, always-in-the-shit smartarse with a Mrs Robinson complex – aged 12.

So there’s this family of three living in a state of resigned but reasonably loving disfunctionality in 70s Christchurch. The dad, Tiny is a ‘steaming ogre’ of a man, with large appetites: Davey, the 12-year-old narrator says: “I thought his insides couldn’t be pink any more, they must be brown, because if it wasn’t beer and cigarettes he was sucking down, it was pies and chops”. Mum is Thelma. She’d like nothing more than a nice, suburban home with a decent garden and the family sitting down for a lovely meal together every night, but it ain’t going to happen. Not with Davey interrupting one of his dad’s mates boffing someone else’s wife in the garden shed, igniting stomach-churning retribution and a move to Timaru to escape the muttering neighbours and the long arm of the law.

Timaru is not far enough however, for Davey to get away from his first sight of a ‘great forest of minge’, (a phrase to give beauty therapists sleepless nights) which he then fantasises about, almost to the point of his first proper… hang on, I’m jumping ahead. Apart from his parents’ problems, Davey has his own to sort out with some local bullies. This is one of the places where Shannon’s writing really blew me away – he masterfully captures that feeling of late childhood, where you think you know what you’re doing but really are absolutely crapping yourself and bluffing desperately. There are those two clear levels of reality – the grown-up world and the kid world, and never the twain can meet, or you’re dead. If you’ve ever been bullied (yes, a little, but I gave as good as I got, don’t you worry) you’ll be right back there reading this.

Another area where he excels is setting the scene. Christchurch in the 70s – I was about ten in Auckland, so it’s not like I was a note-taking local, but again, he’s got it pegged on a visceral level. You can smell the lino, the roast, and the fags, and you just know there are a lot of big ‘taches and stubbies around. It’s like a literary version of that L&P ad.

I suppose I could come up with a bit of a whinge – um… oh yeah – there was a hint of same-age love interest which didn’t go anywhere. That could have been cut, or taken further somehow, but there’s probably already enough going on.

It has invited comparison with that Kiwi classic, The God Boy by Ian Cross, but I certainly don’t remember that book being as funny as this. Black humour cut with the pathos of the human condition, overcoming environmental and parental handicaps to find yourself – and what an ending! I couldn’t believe the last few pages – in fact, I cheered out loud at the last paragraph. Dammit: I can see the plane taking off in the closing credits: pleeeease will someone do the film?

While we’re waiting – in my opinion, this is a very good book. Buy it for someone you love this Christmas, and then steal it.