This propulsive book captures what it means to become a young man in Australia

FICTION
The Cross Thieves
Alan Fyfe
Transit Lounge, $32.99

In the epic tradition, a muse is called down from Heaven, Helicon – or wherever you look upwards and pray – to aid in the telling of heroic stories. Whether it be Milton’s Paradise Lost or Homer’s Iliad, these are ancient, godly affairs; the legends of demigods and angels who eat in feted halls. These heroes are distinctly not Gark and Pell, the two “little derros” that propel the atavistic narrative of The Cross Thieves, the latest novel from WA writer Alan Fyfe, who won book of the year at the 2025 WA Premier’s Book Awards for his poetry collection G-d, Sleep, and Chaos.

Fyfe begins The Cross Thieves with his own, less epic, invocation. “Look here,” he tells the reader, “there were two skinny, hungry boys living in a squat by a slow river”. Immediately, the reader is told to witness the marginalia of society: two homeless boys with “parasite bites” who are attuned to the materialism of their world, Mandurah, and the bodies that influence their every action. Their lives are “all rigged”, dictated by an “endless hustle to live”. Fyfe’s project is to create a neo-epic for the oft forgotten of society: the homeless. As Gark and Pell busk, they sing, directing their song “to those passing people who ignore us”. Fyfe is singing that same song.

The Cross Thieves is thrust into action when Gark decides that he wants to kill Cyrus Stanley, who hails from a Mandurah crime family. Cyrus, the boys learn, raped and murdered Lilly, a woman who once fed Gark and Pell – and that means a great deal to these boys. However, when Gark and Pell arrive at the Stanley house, Cyrus – almost absurdly – is already dead. All that remains of him is a cross, “made from square steel tube with a slaggy weld”. They steal the cross, summoning the rage of the Stanley brothers, who pursue them like “prey”. But, as in the Book of Exodus – one of many books of the Bible that Fyfe alludes to – this chase can end only one way.

The Cross Thieves covers the events of one night, but Fyfe uses items and people to reveal the past in a haunting, non-linear fashion. The story is interspersed with letters between the boys’ mother and their aunty, neither of whom are in the boys’ lives, but both of whom have experienced abuse at the hands of Joshua Chord. Joshua is a local pastor who also has his own viewpoint chapters detailing his drive to a dying parishioner, Amos.

It is important to note that while the book has many biblical allusions, it also undercuts these allusions, juxtaposing the intensely material world of the homeless with the immaterial, neo-Platonic world of religion.

There is a Faulknerian quality to the structure and style of Fyfe’s writing and the biblical undertones – or, sometimes, overtones – add to this Southern Gothic style, transposing it onto Mandurah. Joshua often calls on Bible verses and religious aphorisms. In one such internalised tirade, he thinks, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief … and the heavenly bodies will be burned and dissolved”.

Not that The Cross Thieves has the lethargy of pre-21st-century narratives: it’s a propulsive book. Each interaction leads to another, never stopping, as Gark and Pell map the shadow world of Mandurah.

Fyfe intimately captures what it means to become a young man in Australia, but also the difficulties of a boyhood suppressed by homelessness. Despite myriad pressures, the boys maintain their humour, their boyhood. When they see a sign that reads ‘JESUS THE ULTIMATE THIRST QUENCHER JOHN 7:37’, Gark says, “That’s balls if you’re really thirsty, like, for water, not for the spirit. You’d want an actual sports drink”, to which Pell responds, “Yeah, balls. Wouldn’t mind a Powerade.”

These are just boys getting by: they want a Powerade, to laugh at out-of-touch signs. The Cross Thieves is deeply human; although we drop into one adventurous night in Gark and Pell’s journey, one might feel as though we have known them for their entire lives.

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