Destroying Avalon Review - Cyber Bullying Focus

I am writing in regards to your request for submissions of the inclusion of certain novels on the Australian Literature Society website. The novel ‘Destroying Avalon’ by Kate McCaffrey explores significant issues confronting contemporary Australia making it justifiable for its inclusion on the website. As a relatively modern novel, being published in 2006, the issues explored are contemporary and readers can relate in a realistic manner. The issues of cyber bulling, a new aged phenomenon and acceptance throughout the teenage hierarchy are discussed and I feel this novel addresses many issues faced by young Australians on a realistic and contemporary level. Destroying Avalon gives insight to its readers who hopefully inturn will recognise the realities in bullying and the struggle faced by the need for acceptance. This novel, set in Australia offers a contemporary representation of Australian identity. The view given in this novel of Australian lifestyle is quite different from common media and text representations. The common view of Australians living an outback battler’s life is dismissed with the more realist representation of the suburban lifestyle. Discourses that operate and thereby are exposed through this novel include that of bulling, in many forms, and the discourse of being adolescence but more directly the struggle faced for acceptance in the social hierarchy. These discourses are extremely relevant in the life of any teenager, living in not just Australia but the western world as they are faced with these issues for almost all of their teenage life.

Through the issues faced by the main characters in the novel, the prominence of bullying is exposed in a very realistic and contemporary manner. Bullying is an issue faced inevitably by today’s youth, and as a result of technology accessibility, the medians of this act are increasing. The use of cyber bullying as the main median provides a very realistic image of this issue in contemporary society,