Praise Be is a novella written by a young talented human by the name of Evered Higgins who is yet another extraordinary writing talent living under our noses in The Tawny catchment area.
Some of you may know Evered better as Poemboii and may even have had him write you a poem on his trusty typewriter perched at the Manly Markets where he writes poetry on the spot for anyone who cares to commission him for just a few dollars.
Evered, Poemboii or EH as he’s also known, writes like an old soul. Even his name has an old soul feel to it. Perhaps his mother knew when she birthed him that she had created a human with incredible insight into love, loss, anger, frustration, fleeting happiness and the wonder of nature and being connected to people who uplift you.
Praise Be was a finalist in the International Indie Book Awards in 2021 for writers under twenty-five and it’s easy to see why. EH paints a picture of Ricky, the main character, which is so vivid I swear I’ve seen Ricky sitting at The Steyne Hotel – before it got glammed up – getting drunk with his mates on schooners of Reschs and reliving the glory days of their youth.
Ricky lives alone in a rented place that reeks of his slovenliness, works in a physically demanding and mentally numbing job, nurses unresolved grief about his marriage breakdown and survives from pay packet to pay packet. He’s turned into someone his eighteen-year-old self swore he would never become, old and worn out, drinking at the same table with the same friends, talking about the same things every night. He doesn’t even like these mates that much, they’re just a habit. Ricky is stuck.
It wasn’t always the case though. Once upon a time he loved life and adored surfing. In the ocean Ricky feels like his best self.
When we meet Ricky his knees are shot, surfing is no longer possible. Instead, he regularly visits the headland near his home, swims when it’s dark and always experiences something when underwater that gives him a soothing calmness. He doesn’t care if he becomes shark food because he’s miserable.
His life gets a jolt when he gets the sack from his dead-end job. He heads off to the headland to scream his anger and frustration in such a frenzied way and in proximity to the headland’s edge that a stranger passing by, Emma, thinks Ricky is going to end his life there, which wasn’t his plan. Emma enters the story at page 19 and stays in the story until the end. At first I thought Emma may be a figment of Ricky’s imagination. No. Emma is a fair dinkum human who for reasons that elude me showed real kindness and compassion for gruff, unsociable, barely articulate Ricky.
The wonder of EH’s writing is the authentic voice of Ricky and his mates, the dialogue is so real you feel you’re sitting at the scummy hotel bar overhearing their banter. It’s not an easy read if you find four letter words of the ‘f’ and ‘c’ variety offensive.
I’m not going to give away what happens. You’ll just have to read Praise Be to find out. It’s a story about the redemptive power of hope written in a distinctive voice.