A little while ago I discovered the work of Alan Collins (1928-2008) when I read A Promised Land? a trilogy which featured the wretched childhood of a young boy growing up in Sydney in the 1930s and 40s. Alva’s Boy, An Unsentimental Memoir, is the remarkable story of the author’s childhood on which the novels were based.
In a book featuring many poignant moments, the title is especially so. Alva was Collins’ mother who died in childbirth in 1928; he never knew her. Yet by naming the book as he has, it seems that she mattered more to him than the feckless father who abandoned him first to a succession of children’s homes and an unsatisfactory foster home, and then abrogated all responsibility for him when he did at last bring the boy into the family.
There were relations who were willing to care for the child but Sampson Collins rejected them. However in Sydney’s Jewish community Alan was forever running into people who identified him as ‘poor Alva’s boy’. Although he never knew the love of a mother, Alva was a presence in his life nonetheless, to the extent that his longing for her enabled him to write vividly about her many long years after her death.
However the title also points to the way her name was used to label the boy. Amongst many other privations, Alan was also deprived of his name. His stepmother called him Brat, and her truly horrible mother called him Jewboy. Even his father rarely called him by his name.
It’s not a misery memoir – Alan’s boyhood escapades and his irrepressible humour make sure of that – but he really did have a wretched childhood. Having been spurned, the relations who professed to want him visited him only rarely at the home. He was neglected by his foster parents Cissie and Harry, and his father’s behaviour was unconscionable. A ladies man down on his luck, Sampson Collins submitted to the tyranny of Alva’s successors by refusing to have Alan at all when he was married to Bella, and then by turning a blind eye to base cruelty when he was married to Shirley.
On the night they moved into a house together they had no furniture, so they spent the night at a hotel – all except Alan aged 8, who they left alone in the house on his own. The first time the child slept on a bed was when he was ten and a neighbour took pity on him and arranged a farm holiday for him. The family ate separately: he had his own tin plate and cutlery which he had to wash himself. He was always poorly fed and noticeably thin, and to add to his misery he was subjected to anti-Semitic taunts at school even though he knew very little about his religion.
Nevertheless, with initiative and an innate sense of optimism, Alan managed to survive the chaos of this upbringing. He lived on his wits and occasional stolen food and scrounged odd jobs around Sydney. But the highlight of his childhood was reading, for a kindly librarian waived the penny fee for this unloved and grubby boy so that he could always escape into the world of books.
In adulthood Alan Collins became a self-educated man by reading in libraries – so there is a pleasing symmetry to his eventual career in printing, copywriting, journalism (including a stint as editor of the Sydney Jewish News) and eventually full-time writing…
It is to be hoped that no child in Australia lives this kind of life today.
©Lisa Hill
Author: Alan Collins
Title: Alva’s Boy
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers, 2008
ISBN: 9781876462666
Source: Ros Collins, Executor of the Estate of Alan Collins.
Copies of this book can be bought from Hybrid Publishers.
Update 1.4.11
Alva’s Boy is now available as an eBook too, from Amazon.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Barry O’Farrell (probably next NSW Premier) launched Alva’s Boy in Sydney. Like Lisa, he also talked about Alan’s ‘escape into the world of books’; I’ve stood at Ben Buckler and imagined the boy curled up on the rocks devouring stolen fruit and reading Lawson and Banjo Paterson But Barry was particularly interested in Alan’s ‘take’ on the culture clash between refugees and the local Bondi community during the 1940s: “This was a time of the ‘great awakening of Australia’. When this country’s gaze expanded from a narrow focus on Britain, to a wider, more worldly view….and in Alan Collins’ Alva’s Boy their [the newcomers] first tentative, difficult steps are detailed, their reception captured…he describes a period that is as much a part of this nation’s history as Cook’s voyage of discovery or the arrival of the First Fleet.” I grew up in London. For me the book is a fascinating social history of Sydney with much the same truth, humour and compassion as in Ruth Park’s novels. Lisa is absolutely right to say this is not a ‘misery memoir’; the poet Alex Skovron who launched the book in Melbourne said, ‘…[Alan’s] narrative skill, his gift for storytelling, carries the reader forward with a fluidity and grace all too often belied by the events and experiences being described….a masterly balancing act in his blending of realism, recollection, reconstruction, humour, pathos, irony, tragedy and joy…’
LikeLike
By: Ros on March 19, 2011
at 12:14 pm
Yes, Ros, and how interesting it is that you write this comment about the local community and the refugees on the very day that I read in one of our national newspapers about a woman who was able to escape Iran through ‘the right channels’ criticising those who come as refugees. It seems that native-born Australians are not the only ones to perpetuate this lack of welcome to people who have enriched the diversity of our nation in so many ways.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on March 19, 2011
at 12:51 pm
I’ve been waiting for this review, Lisa. It’s inspiring to think that those who grow up in wretched circumstances can come out the other side as fully rounded, successful, productive adults, when the media/politicians/society etc would have us believe that they will only ever become criminals and/or rely on welfare to get by.
LikeLike
By: kimbofo on March 20, 2011
at 11:12 pm
Yes, it’s inspirational in the way that Bert Facey’s A Fortunate Life is.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on March 21, 2011
at 6:09 pm
Oh yes, how could I forget “A Fortunate Life” — read that one at school.
We also read Alan Marshall’s “I Can Jump Puddles”, which was inspirational, too.
LikeLike
By: kimbofo on March 21, 2011
at 7:12 pm
I read I Can Jump Puddles at school too!
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on March 21, 2011
at 7:47 pm
Good news! Alva’s Boy now on Amazon Kindle and bookshops should have stock or can easily obtain from Hybrid. A Thousand nights at the Ritz (shsort stories) should also be available through shops. Incidentally, anyone see a similarity between Alva and Angela’s Ashes – same wry humour?
LikeLike
By: Ros on March 23, 2011
at 6:56 am
Well done, Ros, that’s smart marketing in the digital age!
Now, what you need to do next, is add the extra edition to Good Reads and Library Thing so that international readers who come across it there can buy a Kindle version if they like the sound of it.
I hope sales go well.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on March 23, 2011
at 8:26 pm
[…] If, like me, Alan Collins is one of those writer’s who has slipped under your radar, then A Thousand Nights at the Ritz and other Stories is a terrific place to get to know him. But be sure to follow it up with Alva’s Boy – check out Lisa Hill’s review. […]
LikeLike
By: A Thousand Nights at the Ritz and other short stories by Alan Collins: Book Review | Karen lee Thompson on October 10, 2011
at 6:45 am
[…] title is suggestive of Alan’s memoir Alva’s Boy (review at ANZ Litlovers) and, despite the gulf between the respective childhoods of the authors, the books make fine […]
LikeLike
By: Solly’s Girl: a memoir by Ros Collins: book review | Karenlee Thompson on May 27, 2015
at 6:16 am
[…] in Sydney in about the same era, is the remarkable personal story on which his novels were based. (See my review.) Knowing that during these years there were indeed unwanted, unloved and horribly neglected […]
LikeLike
By: The Aunt’s House, by Elizabeth Stead | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on April 17, 2019
at 2:08 pm