Gary Lonesborough's "Good Young Men" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

The NSW 7-10 English Syllabus states that across each stage, the selection of texts must give students experiences of a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives, including from popular and youth cultures. We know that student interest and engagement will be heightened if the texts mean something to our students’ lives. Texts which explore youth cultures will be effective choices, especially for disengaged or reluctant readers. In the case of Good Young Men you are not only providing a genuine voice exploring youth culture, but it is also authored by a First Nations writer.

Brief description of Good Young Men

Kallum is the first main narrator of Good Young Men and he is returning to his home town of Carraway’s Point having been expelled from an elite school in Sydney where he had gained a football scholarship with the hope of playing Rugby League for Souths. The reason behind Kallum’s expulsion is not fully revealed until much later and this certainly provides tension and suspense. The narrative focuses mainly on Kallum, Jordy and Dylan, who were close friends in primary school and all lived on Chopin Drive. They have drifted apart in high school and now reconnect after the death of the fourth member of their childhood group, Brandon. Brandon is murdered by a policeman at a house party when being apprehended for stealing. He is shot and dies in a pool of blood in front of Dylan.

Each boy of the old friendship group is trying to deal with his own challenges. Kallum has the backstory to the loss of his sport scholarship to explain and deal with in his return to Carraway’s Point. Jordy contends with family responsibilities and a closeted boyfriend. Dylan was the only witness to Brandon's death, and he must testify in court. Struggling to contain their emotions and process the murder of their friend, Kallum, Jordy and Dylan must navigate explosive events in a way that opens up a future they cannot yet see.

The Aboriginal community, of which the four boys are part, are reeling from this latest Aboriginal death at the hands of the justice system and see it as racially motivated. The town is divided and racial tensions erupt. A group of young white men who continually express homophobic and racist views, and have always taunted the Chopin Drive friendship group, actively stir up trouble and violently threaten Dylan against testifying in court in the trial of the police officer. Some of these incidents are confronting and chilling for the reader. Against this background, the boys of Chopin Drive take on caring roles within their families, explore career options, gain their driver’s licences, graduate Year 12 and win scholarships and entry into Sydney tertiary institutions. Dylan, the most seriously impacted friend, processes his grief by creating a film to tell the truth and expose the injustice in the situation. Jordy and Kallum grow into themselves as gay men, and Kallum is honest with himself and his family about not wanting to pursue a professional football career.

About the author

Gary Lonesborough is a Yuin writer, who grew up on the Far South Coast of NSW as part of a large and proud Aboriginal family. Gary was always writing as a child, and continued his creative journey when he moved to Sydney to study at film school. Gary has experience in youth work, Aboriginal health, child protection, the disability sector (including experience working in the youth justice system) and the film industry.

His young adult novels, The Boy from the Mish and We Didn't Think It Through, have won and been shortlisted for numerous awards, and his third novel, I’m Not Really Here, won the CBCA Book of the Year award for Older Readers. His fourth novel, Good Young Men, was released in March 2026. His acknowledgements are a delight to read. He thanks his Year 6 teacher at St Patrick’s Primary School in Bega, who asked 'twelve-year-old me to send her a copy of my first book', and his Year 12 English teacher at Bega High for 'always cheering on my writing'. 

Share with your students Lonesborough’s website for a detailed explanation of how he came to write Three Good Men as it includes some interesting insights to the writing process: https://garylonesborough.com/

The explanation opens:

This book means so much to me. It began as an idea in 2021 – a scene of a boy leaving his secret boyfriend’s room after a meet up. I then worked on this idea while on an alumni residency at Varuna Writer’s House in Katoomba in late 2022. That story blossomed into Jordy’s first few chapters. After about twenty-thousand words, I shelved the idea. I had gotten to the point where Jordy’s story starts in Good Young Men, and didn’t know where else to go. 

Sometime in 2022, after finishing the edits of my second novel, I started another story about a boy who’d just been expelled from a fancy private school. I was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye, which I loved, and wanted to explore a similar story from the perspective of an Aboriginal boy from a small country town, who came from near poverty and this scholarship he’d received to attend the school was not just a big opportunity for him, but a big opportunity for his family as well. I’d gotten to about the third chapter of Kallum’s story before I decided to shelve the idea. Again, I didn’t know where to go after he’d returned to his hometown and reunited with his old friends …

Pre-reading

Read Cara Shipp’s Listening from the Heart: Rewriting the Teaching of English with First Nations Voices 2023 AATE 150pp to explore better ways to engage with First Nations People and their stories, their histories and cultures and to understand the protocols and appropriate terminology to use when reading and studying texts by First Nation authors. This warm, wise and generous book will be a huge help in the classroom.

Distinctive features of Good Young Men

• There is a 25 page Teaching Resource written by Cara Shipp available from Allen and Unwin. Everything Cara Shipp writes is thoughtful, insightful and valuable. This resource offers excellent advice and guidance for navigating the sensitive aspects of the novel as well as providing some very valuable online references for such topics as Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Communities at Redfern. Also, there are some excellent ideas for exploring the narrative and characters.
• Written by First Nations author, Gary Lonesborough the novel is honest, accessible, pacey and engaging.
• The narrative is in three sections and each section is the story of a different character told through the first person of the characters Kallum, Jordy and Dylan.
• The ‘voices’ are quite similar and students could discuss later as to whether this narrative stylistic choice is as effective as it could be.

• The first chapter is only one page: it is Dylan’s chapter who will later return as the third voice. On this opening page the reader is invited into a world that resonates with parts of Australia at the moment though this compelling paragraph:

      As we step into the shopping centre car park, white spray-paint on the orange brick wall catches my eye. Two council workers in high-vis shirts are on ladders, scrubbing away the faded words: WHITE POWER.

• Kallum takes over the narrative as the first main voice of the novel and he quickly establishes the situation and the authenticity of a young male’s voice: ‘It’s not my fault I got expelled from St Augustine’s - not really.’ 
• Realistic and compelling young adult experiences are convincingly portrayed. 
• Powerful and raw exploration of ideas including racism, youth justice system, challenges of growing up, making choices, toxic masculinity, belonging and identity
• Good Young Men is very much in the YA tradition of coming-of-age, growing up, facing choices and challenges and trying to work out one’s individual identity.

Ways to use Good Young Men in the classroom

Significance of the title: consider the use of the word ‘good’. In our society this word is often associated with decency, honesty, integrity. Describing ‘men’ it immediately positions the reader to consider that there will be ‘good’ men in this narrative and there could also be those who are the opposite. 

Unpack the cover as a visual text and a way of inviting the prospective reader into the narrative. How effective are the illustrations: what do we learn from them? 

The comments above the title are powerful: 

SILENCE IS EASY. TRUTH IS HARD. COURAGE IS EVERYTHING.

Discuss with students the purpose of such subheadings and if the three short sentences influence student response and if so, how?

Structure and narrative point of view

There are thirty-three chapters divided almost equally between the three narrators: Kallum, Jordy and Dylan. Each narrator tells his story in the first person. 

After reading, allocate a character to a separate group:

• What are the key elements of your character’s story?
• How is the reader drawn into the experiences of your character?
• Identify 3-5 extracts which best capture your character’s experiences. What language choices has Lonesborough made to position you to understand these experiences?

Share the group findings and build a class resource to use in specific tasks on this novel, and on the other Lonesborough novels if the class reads and explores them. 

Cara Shipp’s work on characters is excellent; you might like to share her extracts from p. 7-12 of the Allen and Unwin teachers’ resource. 

There are many powerful ideas in this novel:

• Intolerance to differences
• The impact of racism on individuals and communities
• Violence and abuse as a way of interaction
• Alcohol and drugs as part of youth culture
• Growing up and coming to terms with one’s identity
• Sexuality as part of growing up
• Courage and the need to be true to oneself
• The tragedy of young men in custody. 

Share these with your students and ask them to contribute any other ideas that Good Young Men engendered in them.

Sustained response on Good Young Men:

‘Books are not only portals to what happens in our world but they can provoke, challenge and consolidate key ideas about our world.’ 
In what ways is this comment relevant to Gary Lonesborough’s Good Young Men? 
In your response make close reference to the novel and write about 700-800 words.

Workshop the structure of an extended response including the introduction, use of topic sentences and incorporation of sell-selected, relevant textual detail. 

Moving beyond Good Young Men to an author study or a broader unit on Representation

• Consider offering students choice in which other Lonesborough novels to read.
• Try to have multiple copies of each of the other three as some students may want to read them all.
• Share with your students a summary of what happens in each novel and distribute copies as per student choice. 
• It could be valuable to divide the class into three groups designated by the novel students have chosen.
• Allocate class time for reading so that student choice is validated as a worthwhile use of classroom time. 
• Check in with groups after a few lessons and discuss what engages students in the Lonesborough they have chosen. 
• Groups to be encouraged to make a list of key features of their chosen novel which can be presented to the class. 

Why read Gary Lonesborough in Australian high schools?

Consider a post for the school’s Facebook page or school newsletter: Our class have been reading and exploring all of Gary Lonesborough’s books and this is what we think …

Include this comment: ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ 

This article in The Guardian is very accessible and a valuable starting-point: ‘I stopped reading because I couldn't see myself in books. So I wrote one instead’

Ideally invite Lonesborough to visit your school and ask groups to compile a set of questions on their book to ask Gary.

A wide reading task:

In groups or individually, compose a feature article or digital essay which explores two of Lonesborough’s novels and 2-3 other texts:

• Seventeen Luka Lesson (performance poem and video)
• Graphic novels by Jason Reynolds: Oxygen Mask (Five Senses blog 10 December 2023) and Long Way Down (Five Senses blog December 8 2024)
• Glasgow Boys by Margaret McDonald 
• Homeland Calling edited by Ellen Van Neervan. The subtitle of this text is: Words from a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voices. Desert Pea media have produced 48 videos of the songs featured in this collection. (See my Five Senses blog on this rich and wonderful text: 30th September 2024.)

Below is a brief coverage of the other three books; two have more resources in previous Five Senses blogs.

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English K-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Good Young Men is extended prose, a novel by an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait author.  It has cultural, social and gender perspectives, including from popular and youth cultures.

Concepts could include Context • Representation • Point of view • Characterisation • Connotation, imagery and symbol

Relevant NSW English K-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts 

A student uses a range of personal, creative and critical strategies to interpret complex texts EN5-RVL-01

Reading, viewing and listening skills

• Develop a deeper understanding of themes, ideas or attitudes by revisiting and reinterpreting texts to find new meaning

Reading, viewing and listening for meaning

• Analyse the main ideas and thematic concerns represented in texts
• Investigate how layers of meaning are constructed in texts and how this shapes a reader’s understanding and engagement
• Analyse how the use of language forms and features in texts have the capacity to create multiple meanings

Reading for challenge, interest and enjoyment

• Read increasingly complex texts that challenge thinking, pique interest, enhance enjoyment and provoke a personal response
• Engage in sustained and varied reading that presents increasingly diverse and complex perspectives and experiences, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and respond in a range of ways, including through extended written responses
• Consider how the social, cultural and ethical positions represented in texts represent, affirm or challenge views of the world
• Evaluate experiences of reading by sharing responses to texts
• Evaluate the ways reading texts help us understand ourselves and make connections to others and the world

Reflecting

• Understand and reflect on the value of reading for personal growth and cultural richness
• Reflect on how reading promotes a broad and balanced understanding of the world and enables students to explore wider universal issues

Understanding and responding to texts A

A student analyses how meaning is created through the use and interpretation of increasingly complex language forms, features and structures EN5-URA-01

Representation

• Analyse how contextual, creative and unconscious influences shape the composition, understanding and interpretation of all representations

Code and convention

• Use metalanguage effectively to analyse how meaning is constructed by linguistic and stylistic elements in texts
• Analyse how language forms, features and structures, specific or conventional to a text’s medium, context, purpose and audience, shape meaning, and experiment with this understanding through written, spoken, visual and multimodal responses

Connotation, imagery and symbol

• Analyse how figurative language and devices can be used to represent complex ideas, thoughts and feelings to contribute to larger patterns of meaning in texts, and experiment with this in own texts
• Analyse how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors use figurative language and devices to represent culture, identity and experience

Point of view

• Examine elements of focalisation, such as omniscience, limitations, indirect speech, tone, reliability and multiple narrators, and how these interact to shape perceptions of meaning in texts, and apply this in own texts

Characterisation

• Analyse how engaging, dynamic and complex characters are constructed in texts using language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts

Narrative

• Analyse how narrative conventions vary across genres, modes, media and contexts and how they can be used to represent ideas and values and shape responses, and apply this understanding in own texts
• Explore how narratives can represent and shape personal and shared identities, values and experiences

Understanding and responding to texts B

A student evaluates how texts represent ideas and experiences, and how they can affirm or challenge values and attitudes EN5-URB-01

Perspective and context

• Understand how the personal perspectives of audiences are a product of historical and cultural contexts
• Analyse how texts can be understood or interpreted from different perspectives, and experiment with this idea in own texts
• Evaluate how texts can position audiences to accept, challenge or reject particular perspectives of the world, and reflect on this in own texts
• Analyse how elements of an author’s personal, cultural and political contexts can shape their perspectives and representation of ideas, including form and purpose
• Explain how texts affirm or challenge established cultural attitudes and values in different contexts

Style

• Analyse how the distinctive aesthetic qualities and stylistic features of a text can shape and be shaped by its purpose, and experiment with this in own texts
• Examine the way an author’s distinct personal style shapes meaning in their work

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023) 

Connecting texts