The Dark Part of Me by Belinda Burns is a raw, gritty, realistic portrayal of the sort of lifestyle that many teenagers and younger adults lead these days. The characters drink excessively, take illegal drugs, speed around in cars, have unprotected sex, and go to all-night raves - or do several of those things at once. They’re bored, disillusioned and irresponsible, only interested in having a good time while ignoring the risks and consequences of their actions.
The novel is set in Brisbane, or BrisVegas, as some locals call it, and centres on a 19-year-old woman named Rosie. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mother, Janice, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Rosie is a university drop-out who works in a café. She hates her job and her life, and continually pines after her ex-boyfriend Scott, who broke up with her a year earlier. She lives for drugs and raves, and derides the mundane lives of the ‘burbanites’ around her, while failing to recognise the pointlessness and self-destructiveness of her own lifestyle.
There are many dark aspects to Rosie’s life, and that of her friends and family. She frequently smokes marijuana or takes speed or ecstasy, as does her best friend Trish, Scott and his friends. They obtain drugs very easily, and never have to face any legal consequences as they never get caught. It illustrates how widespread drug use is in society and how casual people’s attitudes are towards it.
Of course, there are even worse potential consequences of drug use. At one point in the novel, Rosie overdoses at a rave and nearly dies, only surviving because Scott performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and Trish calls an ambulance. Unfortunately, Rosie doesn’t learn anything from the experience and continues to take drugs later on. It reflects the way that many people behave in real life.
Rosie’s father, Trevor, is also a drug addict, but in his case, it’s a legal drug, alcohol. He had a drinking problem even before he married Janice, and started physically abusing her on their honeymoon. After Rosie was born, he drank even more heavily and became increasingly violent, smashing furniture and punching holes in the walls of their home (literally and metaphorically). Even though he almost killed Rosie in a drunken car accident and Janice divorced him, he was unwilling or unable to give up alcohol. When Rosie meets him at a coffee shop for their annual Christmas get-together, he drinks beer continually, while asking, as he does every year, whether Janice would take him back if he gave up drinking. Like every other character in the novel, he fails to learn anything from his mistakes and even though he dimly recognises that he has a problem, makes no real attempts to solve it.
Although Rosie’s life isn’t as sad or desperate as her father’s, she takes many risks without considering the consequences. A flashback scene shows her having a car race against Scott through the streets when she’s 17. She has a serious accident and breaks her arm. It’s written in a less believable way than the rest of the novel; she doesn’t suffer much and is even sexually intimate with Scott straight afterwards. In real life, a broken arm is overwhelmingly painful and the victim can’t think of anything else.
Another flashback scene explains how Rosie met Scott - and shows more of the risks that she and other young people take. She sneaks out of her bedroom window at night and catches a bus into the city to go to a nightclub when she’s only 16 years old. She mentions that all of the ‘cool girls’ at school go out clubbing, often with fake IDs. She’s sexually harassed by an older university student on the bus but doesn’t regard it as a warning, and as a result is nearly sexually assaulted by him and his friends later on inside the club. She still doesn’t appreciate the danger she’s in and stays at the club for a while, even accepting a lift home from Scott, who’s a stranger at the time. Fortunately, he doesn’t try to abuse her.
Rosie and Scott’s relationship is very different from her parents’, reflecting the generation gap and changing social roles and customs. Janice appears to have rushed into marriage, marrying Trevor after only ‘four or five’ dates, perhaps because of social pressure. She put up with Trevor beating her, covering the bruises with make-up while quietly saving up money in the hope of leaving him some day. Rosie, on the other hand, is far more confident and assertive and her relationship with Scott is more equal, although also more casual. She and Scott drink and take drugs together and wrestle with each other. She starts having a sexual relationship with him after going out with him for three months, without considering how long the relationship will last or even thinking about a future marriage.
Like many young people, Scott is casual about relationships and unwilling to fully commit himself. After he’s been seeing Rosie for a while, he abruptly leaves her to travel around Europe with his best friend, despite previously having planned to travel with Rosie. He waits another year before breaking up with her over the phone. He returns to Brisbane but waits two weeks before contacting Rosie. He calls her ‘babe’, as if she’s his girlfriend, and continues to go out with her occasionally, but sees someone else behind her back.
Rosie is no wiser than her mother about relationships, being unable to see when one isn’t working or deal with it appropriately. When Scott breaks up with her over the phone, she’s upset, but resorts to smoking marijuana, drinking scotch, dancing to trance, and chatting up rugby players. She’s unable to completely accept that the relationship’s over, and saves postcards that Scott sends, reading non-existent declarations of love into his brief messages. She also quits university and starts working at the coffee shop in the hope of saving up enough money to join him in England and rekindle their relationship.
The fact that Rosie has a job and is able to set a goal and work towards it shows that she isn’t completely irresponsible, and that there’s hope for her in the future. She saves up $10,000 -- a significant sum of money for someone of her age -- -though a small amount of it is from till-skimming. When Scott returns to Australia she continues working even though she no longer needs the money, which shows some maturity. The fact that she was studying law at university also shows that she’s intelligent, even though she lacks wisdom.
Some of the other characters in the novel lead darker and more disturbing lives than Rosie. She has a friend named Hollie, whose actress mother, Mrs Bailey, shot herself in her bedroom when Hollie was very young. Hollie keeps the bedroom as is, holds elaborate Christmas parties in her mother’s memory, and dresses up in her mother’s old costumes to enact love scenes from Shakespeare with Rosie. Hollie’s brother, Danny, is even more disturbed and has been in jail for murdering one of his school friends. The relationship between Rosie, Hollie, and Danny is strange and unhealthy, however, none of them recognises it.
An interesting aspect of the novel is its portrayal of Aboriginal culture. Rosie, Hollie. and Danny, despite being non-Indigenous, are fascinated by the traditional Aboriginal lifestyle. When they’re children, they go to their favourite hideaway in the bush and play a game where they pretend to be Aboriginal, darkening their skin with mud, marking themselves with ochre and dancing naked around a campfire.
The novel also hints at some of the problems that Aboriginal people face in contemporary society. Once when Rosie goes to a rave, she sees a group of local Aboriginal people leaning against the wall across the street, wearing scruffy clothes and drinking. Their feelings of alienation and hopelessness are reflected for her in their sad, dead eyes. Rosie also mentions her father’s attitude towards them: he labels them dole-bludgers who ‘couldn’t handle their booze’, conveniently ignoring the fact that he’s a chronic alcoholic himself. It illustrates the racist, hypocritical attitudes that many non-Indigenous people have.
The whole novel is written in first person from Rosie’s point of view. It’s in a very colloquial style, and some of the key scenes from Rosie’s life are in first person, making them more dramatic and immediate. The novel draws the readers into Rosie’s dark world and keeps them turning the pages to find out what happens next.
The author, Belinda Burns, grew up in Brisbane but wrote the book while living in London and studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University College. She won a prize from a literary agency for the best novel from the course. The Dark Part of Me is her first published novel.
Chris Broadribb has an MA in creative writing and a Grad. Dip. in journalism. She has had articles and short stories published in magazines, newspapers and websites. She has self-published two novellas (one for adults and one for children) and is working on a full-length novel.