"This book is bursting with colour and heart"
Libby Armstrong Beachside Bookshop
I am going to begin with two text quotes to give you a flavour of this writing. Here are the first sentences from the opening pages;
"You have arrived for a better life at the New House in the New Land. It has been a long journey, the first time you've ever been on an aeroplane. It was nerve-racking when they checked the suitcases at the airport, even though your family has next to no possessions, let alone anything to hide."
Shirley Marr tells us so much from these few sentences but she also leaves so many unanswered questions. Where is the New Land? Who owns the New House? Where have the family travelled from? Why do they have so few possessions? Its been a long journey - is our narrator a refugee? If she is how did she come to travel by aeroplane?
The New House which Meixing calls Big Scary, was owned by First Uncle. He has died and left the house to his sister and her husband. Ma Ma is expecting a baby. Ba Ba will need to get a job and a car and this will be difficult when he has limited skills with the New Language. The neighbours - Mr and Mrs Huynh are kind and offer food and practical help but they speak another language (I assume Vietnamese) and so their food and customs are unfamiliar to the Lim family. Later we learn Meixing and her family have come from China.
Things at school are also confusing for Meixing. In this scene she needs to cross the road but the procedures with the lollipop man are so confusing:
"He thinks you're a silly girl who doesn't know how to cross the road. And he's right. You are a silly girl who doesn't know how to cross the road. Back where you came from there were hardly any cars. Or roads, for that matter. The workers flats you lived in, the deep wounds in the ground from where the machines took out the precious Earth Dust and the handful of shops were the only blights on the island. Beyond that was jungle and dirt tracks, and you went wherever you wanted. You were wild and free ... "
In the backyard of the new house Meixing discovers a greenhouse. When she steps inside she enters a magical place. First Uncle shows her how to plant seeds as a way to understand the past. Later she is able to share this magic with Kevin Huynh from next door and Josh. "You know that if you call on the glasshouse in your hour of need, the glasshouse - suspended somewhere between reality and imagination - will never let you down."
It is not often that I say I really dislike a character in a book but in A Glasshouse of Stars the teacher Miss Cicely is despicable. Her treatment of Meixing feels like child abuse. I shudder to think a teacher would actually speak to or treat a student in the way we witness from Miss Cicely and I do hope Shirley Marr was not subjected to this cruelty but since this story is semi autobiographical I worry that this part might be based on her experience. Thank goodness for the compassion of the ESL teacher Ms Jardine. So you can see from these comments that this is a book that makes the reader feel things. I loved the honesty of Meixing; the developing friendships; the fragments of each child's back story which we see in the glasshouse; the crazy aunties who arrive at Big scary; and most importantly the way Shirley Marr lets her reader experience just how hard it is when you don't have language skills to communicate your wants, needs and wishes.
When you pick up this book you may find the writing style is a little challenging. Our students are more familiar with either first or third person narratives. Shirley Marr explains:
This is a migration story I have been trying to write all my life. But I also spent a lot of my life trying to forget and disappearing into myself. I tried to write it from a first person point of view, but it always felt too close and I would always pull back. Third person also felt so distant, like I was writing someone else's story. I happened to pick up a copy of Deadgirls by Nancy Lee from an op-shop while looking for reading matter while on holiday. I was immediately inspired by the first short story, written in the second voice. As soon as I started writing my story in the same voice, I knew it was right. I knew it was a story I had to tell while the reader walked in my shoes and saw some of the things I saw and experienced when I was a child.
The cover of A Glasshouse of Stars is beautiful. The art is by Cornelia Li. My copy of A Glasshouse of Stars came from Penguin Random House. In the UK Usborne have given this book a different cover. I love comparing covers with students. Take a look at this review.
Here is the blurb from Readings in Melbourne:
Meixing Lim and her family have arrived at the New House in the New Land, inherited from First Uncle who died tragically and unexpectedly while picking oranges in the backyard. Everything is vast and unknown to Meixing and not in a good way, including the house she has dubbed Big Scary. She is embarrassed by the second-hand shoes given to her by the kind neighbours, has trouble understanding the language at school, and with fitting in and making new friends. Her solace is a glasshouse in the garden that inexplicably holds the sun and the moon and all the secrets of her memory and imagination. Her fragile universe is rocked when tragedy strikes and Ma Ma refuses to face the world outside. Meixing finds herself trapped within the shrinking walls of Big Scary. Her parents said this would be a better life for them all, but it feels like the worst and most heart-breaking experience of Meixing’s entire existence. Surviving will take all the resilience and inner belief of this brave girl to turn their world around.
Here is another review from The Bottom Shelf and this book also reached Ms Yingling in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Karen Yingling gives, as usual, a great plot summary. While she enjoyed this book she feels it is too "Australian" for her readers.
Here are some companion reads. Just like Wen in Tiger Daugher, Meixing also carries the huge burden of parental expectations.
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