Excerpt from What Harry Saw by Thomas Moran, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Presently Dad took heavily to drink. Alcohol never made him mean or aggressive, just dull and careless. And I turned morose and sullen, moping about, falling behind in school. Soon enough I found my own antidote: using rage to stifle grief. First time I tried that on, getting really furious at Mum for having abandoned me, guilt hit me as sharp and shocky as if I'd stuck a key in an electric socket. So I bypassed her and let anger pour over the world and the way everyone lived in it. Not exactly an original response--certainly not a wise one as things turned out--but it seemed clever enough to me at the time.

Dad drunk and me venomous in the ever bitter air of the house made our home in Ashfield not exactly a place you would enjoy coming back to at the end of your day. So we both kept away as much as we could. Dad began loitering around the pub or the Returned Servicemen's League club 'til they threw him out. I ran a bit wild with a couple of bad boys from school I hadn't wanted to know before, sniffing glue in brown paper bags. We moved on to various uppers and downers, some grass or hash once in a while. Our tastes eventually centered on the rush of crystal meth, and the speedy aggro it fueled.

Dad was either too drunk or too numbed to notice the hours I started keeping and the condition I'd stagger home in. My new mates and I got deeply into petty thievery, vandalism, devilry of all sorts. Wired on meth, we'd hang on some of the busier street corners, pick fights with boys almost at random. Never hesitating to put the boot in once we'd beaten a bloke to the pavement. And we'd make ourselves as obnoxious as possible to any girl past puberty who wandered by. It was so easy. We never had to say a word--just a really exaggerated lick in the air. No love beads, acid highs, mellow opium dreams or maundering hippie shit for me, though there were lots of kids into that stuff at the time. I liked to play rough. Or thought I did, until I found out what rough really is. Phuoc Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1971--the very arse-end of yet another war, my battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment gradually withdrawing along with most of the American troops. Hardly any serious fighting at all, just some very short and vicious skirmishes from time to time.

But then I got a beaut of a "so long, mate" from Mr. Charles in the form of an RPG as I was sneaking through the camp perimeter one night after a social call on a girl named Phong down at the local ville. Red-hot shrapnel shredded my flesh. My right side and back from neck to hip still looks like it's been chewed by a mob of starving goannas. Or a couple of really big dingos.

Phuoc Tuy. Fuck Toy. Pretty funny, yeah? May as well add that to my shortlist for oblivion, too.

from What Harry Saw: A Novel by Thomas Moran, Copyright © September 2002, Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc., used by permission.