I’ve partnered these three debut novels because they’re all about preteen girls (although, in the third, Under the Udala Trees, our heroine does grow up to become a mother herself). Set in Britain, China and Nigeria they feature loneliness, religion and burgeoning sexuality with the latter two against the backdrop of war.
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Twelve-year-old Harper is passionate about gerbils, the pop charts and her Chambers dictionary. She loves both her parents; it’s just a pity they no longer live together. Most of the time she’s at her mother’s rented house on the wrong side of a small Midlands town, but every other weekend she spends with her father in a mouldering cottage in a backwater village, exchanging teen magazines and television for the village fete and social events at the Lone Rangers single parents’ club.
Julia Forster’s debut novel is a light-hearted story about the pleasures and pains of leaving childhood behind, as Harper discovers CND, menstruation, a first boyfriend and a first glimpse of death. She also discovers, much as she’d like it to be otherwise, she must allow her parents to organise their love lives for themselves. Published earlier this year by Atlantic, I received my copy from the Curtis Brown Book Group. Although this novel wasn’t really to my taste, it might appeal to those for whom 1988 is ancient history (when women needed to be married to get a mortgage and olive oil came from the chemist for the sole purpose of dissolving earwax, apparently!) rather than the day before yesterday.
Julia Forster’s debut novel is a light-hearted story about the pleasures and pains of leaving childhood behind, as Harper discovers CND, menstruation, a first boyfriend and a first glimpse of death. She also discovers, much as she’d like it to be otherwise, she must allow her parents to organise their love lives for themselves. Published earlier this year by Atlantic, I received my copy from the Curtis Brown Book Group. Although this novel wasn’t really to my taste, it might appeal to those for whom 1988 is ancient history (when women needed to be married to get a mortgage and olive oil came from the chemist for the sole purpose of dissolving earwax, apparently!) rather than the day before yesterday.
Ten-year-old Henrietta Robertson has been boarding at a school halfway up a sacred mountain for the past four years. Partly due to the distance, partly because much of China is now under Japanese occupation, she’s been home only twice and, if it weren’t for the photograph beside her bed, she wouldn’t know how to recognise her missionary parents. Battling against Big Bum Eileen for leadership of the girls of Dormitory A, she establishes a society of prophetesses. But her friends’ interest wanes when they begin to prepare for their baptism. Excluded because no letter arrives granting her parents’ permission, Henrietta courts a little Chinese girl she discovers playing in the mud, with the intention of converting her and making her an honorary daughter. When her efforts lead to tragedy, Henrietta runs away from school, only to find there are greater dangers in the countryside beyond its boundaries.
Henrietta is an endearing character whose good intentions often lead to trouble. But, despite moments of poignancy and humour, there are longeurs in the first half of the novel when we follow the preoccupations of a ten-year-old in rather too much detail. Nevertheless, I was interested to learn more about missionaries in China and about the Japanese internment camps; the latter, although in a different place and era, reminding me of the South African concentration camp in Dave Boling’s novel, The Undesirables. Congratulations Rebecca MacKenzie on an ambitious first novel, and thanks to Tinder Press for my proof copy.
Henrietta is an endearing character whose good intentions often lead to trouble. But, despite moments of poignancy and humour, there are longeurs in the first half of the novel when we follow the preoccupations of a ten-year-old in rather too much detail. Nevertheless, I was interested to learn more about missionaries in China and about the Japanese internment camps; the latter, although in a different place and era, reminding me of the South African concentration camp in Dave Boling’s novel, The Undesirables. Congratulations Rebecca MacKenzie on an ambitious first novel, and thanks to Tinder Press for my proof copy.
In the second year of the Biafran war, Ijeoma’s father gives up. When the bombers tear through the sky, he refuses to join his wife and young daughter in the bunker at the end of the garden. When they emerge to confront the damage wrought to their house, he is dead. In her grief, Mama decides to send her daughter to lodge with virtual strangers, while she goes in search of somewhere safe to live and doesn’t return to collect her for eighteen months. Kept as a servant, Ijeoma has befriended another lost girl and, while still only children, the pair find consolation in their forbidden love.
In an effort to cure her of the “abomination”, her mother inflicts daily Bible lessons on the girl. Although respectful and compliant, Ijeoma is not convinced. I found this part a little preachy until we came to the tract supposedly teaching that it’s preferable for a woman to be raped than for two men to engage in consensual sex. Despite living in America since the age of ten, Chinelo Okparanta seems to be addressing her debut model to her native Nigeria, which an author’s note confirms as a country with high levels of religiosity and in which same-sex relationships are criminalised. Not much celebration in LGBT history month over there. Under the Udala Trees is an important novel for that reason, more of a biography than a particular type of woman, in the manner that Academy Street is about the Irish diaspora. Thanks to Granta for my review copy.
In an effort to cure her of the “abomination”, her mother inflicts daily Bible lessons on the girl. Although respectful and compliant, Ijeoma is not convinced. I found this part a little preachy until we came to the tract supposedly teaching that it’s preferable for a woman to be raped than for two men to engage in consensual sex. Despite living in America since the age of ten, Chinelo Okparanta seems to be addressing her debut model to her native Nigeria, which an author’s note confirms as a country with high levels of religiosity and in which same-sex relationships are criminalised. Not much celebration in LGBT history month over there. Under the Udala Trees is an important novel for that reason, more of a biography than a particular type of woman, in the manner that Academy Street is about the Irish diaspora. Thanks to Granta for my review copy.
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