Awkward, funny and poignant, Jarvis 24 places the reader in the mind of 16-year-old Marc Jarvis, who tries to step outside the boundaries of his private school life by taking on work experience for two weeks in a car yard. Within days Marc has made friends with 24-year-old Mikey, who is gay and has run away from home in Queensland, and met Electra, a girl who has moved away from her family and friends in Broome to follow her dream to be a world-class sprinter. As he falls in love with Electra, and deals with the ensuing memories of his first girlfriend who died years earlier, Marc grapples with a world so much less simple than the world of school that he is used to. Travis, his sidekick, is always there. . .
It's a funny, gentle coming-of-age story about falling in love and finding your place in the world, about growing up and growing apart. And, most importantly, about friendship.
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As a child David Metzenthen was a nature boy; he loved fishing and farm work, exploring the bush, and being outdoors under the stars. He also lived very much inside his own head; feeling that the world was a place of unlimited adventure. He harboured dreams of becoming a cowboy, a fisherman, a farmer, a sailor, or a writer. Instead he left home at eighteen, with a copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road for company, and hitch-hiked his way around New Zealand. Returning to Australia, David worked as a builder's labourer and advertising copy writer before finding success as a writer of books for children and young adults.