"All you see is a poor girl ... A girl without power of choices. But you are wrong.
I am here to live a different story. I am here to write my own story."
Nia has lost her mother and her father has begun drinking heavily to ease his grief. Nia, young brother Rudi and her father live in poverty. Each week it is a desperate struggle to find enough money for their rent payment and food. Nia's father has a small food cart from which he makes fried bananas to sell near the busy railway station.
Nia is a clever girl. She longs to continue her education and move onto High School but this costs money and now that her father has stopped earning money due to an accident she has to leave school and attend to the food cart.
Nia loves to tell stories and these are woven into this book. Her stories are about Dewi Kadita, Princess of the Southern Sea and are based on Javanese folktales.
Her life takes a strange turn when Nia is involved in a mini bus accident. While others are badly hurt and one boy is killed, Nia walks away uninjured. A witness to this incident - Mr Oskar a local tailor - declares Nia is now a special girl and that buying her fried bananas will bring good luck. Long queues form as people jostle to buy from her stall. Some what unwisely Nia increases her price and money begins to flow in but it is very clear this enterprise is doomed. Meanwhile her father has disappeared and Nia and her brother are struggling. Oskar, who keeps hanging around, also has his own, shocking reasons, for wanting to befriend Nia.
A thought-provoking peek into a culture ... Kirkus
Here is an alternate cover. Which do you like best?
I have had such a feast of wonderful reading this week - Talking to Alaska by Anna Wolta (due out in July); Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim; Beyond Belief by Dee White; and Haywire by Claire Saxby and now I add Girl of the Southern Sea to this list.
I do need to give a violence warning for The Girl of the Southern Sea. The publisher lists this book as suitable for ages 9-13. Once again, as I often seem to do lately, I disagree. In my view this is a book for mature readers aged 11+. There is a horrific scene in this book when the crowd discover Nia is not "a lucky charm" as they had been led to believe. The mob hurl stones at her and then she is doused in kerosene. Nia survives but the horror and raw hatred of this scene lingers with me (an adult reader) many days later.
Michelle Kadarusman lives in Canada but she was born in Melbourne. She is the author of The Theory of Hummingbirds.
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