The Bone Sparrow

Book Title: The Bone Sparrow

Author: Zana Fraillon

Date Started: June 29th 2016

Date Completed: July 10th 2016

Genres: Contemporary
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Four stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

I don't think I've ever actually read a book about refugees. Admittedly contemporary and war-related historical novels aren't really my thing, but even so when I noticed The Bone Sparrow it piqued my interest. I knew nothing about refugee detention center or even the Rohingya people when I started reading, and by the end I'm disgusted that the events in this book based on real life are never reported to us - as Fraillon makes clear in her afterword was the point.

The Bone Sparrow has a tone to it throughout, regardless of severity of events it portrays. Weaved in amongst the contemporary genre are these little nods to fairytales and storytelling in its purest form: through the eyes of a child. Subhi himself is a brilliant narrator who is very well written for his age and perspective. The inclusions of things like his Night Sea, the Shakespeare duck (who is the best character) and the stories he reads from Jimmie's book add that little bit of magical realism that really picks up everything that's happening and engages the reader.

Having said that I would really have liked a bit more description on things like setting. If I hadn't read around the book a little I would have missed that the book is set in Australia, and I think that actually makes quite a difference to the story in terms of setting (especially when I was picturing things like Subhi's Night Sea which sometimes floods the tents - my admittedly stereotyped instinct goes towards a European setting which is quite a different picture). I also think this would have made a little bit more of a contrast between Subhi and Jimmie's lives: one comes from a refugee detention center and the other from (I think) a reasonably wealthy family. Just a little more detail into those visual contrasts would have been nice.

My favourite part of The Bone Sparrow was the little stories shared between characters and weaved into the whole nature of the book. The idea of stories as an escape was lovely, but it also elevated the atmosphere of the detention center to make it feel a lot more dark at times, and filled with community at others. From Subhi's perspective I think this really makes the story what it is and that little bit more engaging for a reader.

Without knowing much about the subject, I feel like we're given a good representation of what these refugee detention centers are like, but I have to say while I support all the messages we're given, it didn't hit me as a story itself. This is in part because of the inclusion of Jimmie and her personal struggles as an outsider of the detention center. While her story had merit, it felt like a bit of a distraction: she had her difficult relationships with her dad and brother, but none really fit into parallels or some sort of mutual growth between the two children to help solve both their problems. They were just two kids talking to each other, and while that was nice to read about, it took away from the focus of the book and was quite frustrating to read when there were frankly more important parts of the narrative to get to.

When it comes to characters the relationships were the best thing to come across. I have to say past Subhi and Jimmie we don't really get such development in anyone else past their originally solid characters. But the family and friend relationships come across really well: I didn't need convincing that Subhi loved his mother, and his older sister Queeny loved him despite her angry responses pretty much any time he opened his mouth.

Subhi was a really nice protagonist, both as a person and a character in the plot. Something I often get annoyed with when younger characters are given main role is they're often not written as their age: you have 9 year olds that understand the world like 18 year olds, but talk like a 5 year old. Even though I don't think it mentions what age he is, you get a pretty solid idea that Subhi is a young kid that doesn't really understand anything that's happening to him, but is still intuitive and clever enough to understand how it's affecting the people around him. Fraillon really utilises the stories he tells to Jimmie and the others here, and seeing that idea of stories as an escape was a really lovely aspect to the book as a whole.

The pacing ends up feeling a bit repetitive switching between Subhi's life in the day and his meetings with Jimmie at night, but things do slowly progress and it's a nice, gentle way to look at these issues through the eyes of a child. While we're of course building up to something this is one of those books that tells its story a lot more through its narration that its action.

I enjoyed The Bone Sparrow, and it's great these kinds of stories exist, but I wasn't blown away by it as a book itself. Fans of The Boy in Striped Pajamas would enjoy this, and if anyone needs reminding that refugees are unfairly persecuted without reason this is the book for them. I would've liked the glimpses of magical realism to have been developed a little more, but all in all it was a good read.

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