KYDYAC
KYDYAC – The Ghost’s Child by Sonya Hartnett
Kicking off the second week of the KYD YA Championship, Jordi Kerr discusses the YA book that has lovingly haunted her, Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child.
People can be broken in so many ways. By illness or injury. By the loss of love. By a good book.
The Ghost’s Child is a book that will break you, in the best possible way. It tells of the life of Matilda Victoria Adelaide, alternating between 75-year-old Matilda recounting her story to an uninvited visitor in the form of a young boy, and ‘Maddy’ as a young girl. It is a story tinged with magic, told with the gravitas of a fable. It is a story about journeys, about hope and futility, beauty and peace, love and loss.
The first time I read The Ghost’s Child, I strongly identified with Maddy (and cried profusely). I was caught in the chaos of an unrequited, grown-up love of my own, and Maddy’s desire for an adult life, the trimmings and facets of it, resonated with me. Maddy wants to build a life with her love, Feather – a wild man that she finds at the beach. Feather’s origins are unknown and probably magical. Yet Maddy tries to suppress anything magical, such as her mythical companion, the nargun, in a desperate attempt to validate her relationship with Feather to the outside world. A “proper” relationship needs a house. A fence. A tidy garden. Maddy subscribed to this contradictory belief that if you have these real-world things, everything will magically be okay.
Maddy stopped confiding in the nargun, because she had no time for anything that wasn’t necessary and real. – p 81
Rereading The Ghost’s Child in order to write this post I identified with Feather as much as Maddy herself. (And still cried profusely.) Now I am a little older, and perhaps a little wiser. I have experienced enough of love that I can see both sides more clearly: the strengths, the failings, and the attempts by both individuals to live truthfully. I have recently been broken by an autoimmune disease and am grieving. I am reframing and rethinking my relationships, my direction, my life – and have again found The Ghost’s Child a fitting source of identification.
Life is not a story, and things don’t always turn out as you’d prefer. That doesn’t mean you have failed, though. – p 173
There’s a reason Hartnett won the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. All of her works have beautifully crafted phrasings, sentences which are artworks in themselves. Nor is she afraid to tackle the deep and dark parts of life, which are often shied away from in YA literature, as though life itself were as discerning. With a single sentence, writers can reach into the core of you and hold your beating heart in their hand. Hartnett not only does this, but once she has a grip she squeezes. The Ghost’s Child, though just under 200 pages, is particularly dense with such moments.
She did not know how far a child should be invited into the world of his elders. With its hard laws and complicated outcomes, the grown-up world was not a good place for children. – p 93
Like all good YA books, The Ghost’s Child is as compelling for adults as it is for teen readers. It will make you feel heavier than you thought possible, make you want to remove your heart and hand its burden to somebody else. It perfectly captures and articulates insecurity, grief and depression. Yet it will also make you inexplicably grateful that you have this weight to bear. Its tale wraps around you like a warm blanket. It delivers reassurance, and it illuminates the importance of hope, of choice and of living.
People can be healed in so many ways. By possessing a sense of purpose. By the love of another. By a good book.
Jordi Kerr is a freelance writer with a passion for YA novels, films, and fantasy. Her day job is at the Centre for Youth Literature, championing great YA to teens, and supporting the amazing teachers, librarians, and literacy professionals who work with young readers. You can learn more about her freelance work at www.jordikerr.com, or can stalk her on Twitter @WritingJordi.
If you want The Ghost’s Child to win the KYD YA Championship, you can cast your vote for it here! Vote now and you can also go into the draw to win some amazing prizes.
18 Responses to KYDYAC – The Ghost’s Child by Sonya Hartnett
Leave a Reply
KYDYAC – Mandragora by David McRobbie
Offers
-
Current Issue
Kill Your Darlings, No. 13
April 2013 The Stella Prize
Kill Your Darlings is a proud supporter of The Stella Prize.
11:18 am, August 7, 2012
Sonya Hartnett is one of those writers who just kills me every time. The way she uses language, what she does to her characters. Sleeping Dogs is probably my pick of hers, although I have love-hated them all.
I don’t think that YA in general shies away from the dark and deep parts of life – quite the opposite, actually. And that’s one of its strengths, is that it offers teenage readers the opportunity to explore these tricky themes and issues.
Saying that, many YA books end up dealing with the dark&deep in a heavy-handed, “grief-porn”-y way. The fact that Sonya Hartnett’s never do this is just another mark of her greatness.
Great post, Jordi.
12:20 pm, August 7, 2012
What a beautiful review. This is definitely making it onto my list of YA books to read. I love the fact a teenager’s story can resonate so strongly with an adult’s feelings and emotions, too. I think everyone has a book, or something of a similar nature, they turn to when things don’t work out and Jordi’s piece is a good reminder YA can offer that comfort to adults, also.
4:33 pm, August 7, 2012
Hi Kate and Emily,
Thanks for your comments and kind words!
Kate – interestingly, I nearly went with Sleeping Dogs because of its huge impact on the YA scene, but couldn’t go past The Ghost’s Child just because of how much it resonates with me personally.
I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts about YA & “darkness”. I do feel such books are in the minority… but perhaps this is because they are (sadly) often either held back by gatekeepers, or labelled as offensive, or as “issues” books that are only suited to classrooms, and older or advanced readers? And yet – as you mention – it is so vital that teenage readers have the opportunity to explore these things.
Emily – I am so thrilled that it’s made it onto your to-read list. If I could afford to send a copy of it to every English-reader in the world, I would!
9:51 am, August 8, 2012
I’m going to be thinking a lot about The YA Darkness over the next few weeks now that you’ve got me started, so I might get back to you later if you’re really interested! Once I’ve got my thoughts clear…
But my mind jumped straight to titles like Borrowed Light by Anna Fienberg (so beautiful), Touching Earth Lightly by Margo Lanagan and Our Little Secret by Allayne Webster. Even Margaret Wild’s amazing verse novel Jinx.
There are the ones that I didn’t like particularly (because I don’t think the “message” or what I took from them was helpful or constructive), but that are insanely popular worldwide, such as 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher and Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl.
Very interesting to think about the gatekeepers, and labelling darker books as “issues books”. To be continued…
12:10 pm, August 8, 2012
I am really interested, so please do :)
I agree there’s some amazing YA works that handle darkness in an elegant way (and so many of them Australian – woohoo!). I’m a big fan of Margo Lanagan, but I also see school libraries hesitating to stock her books sometimes, especially after the Tender Morsels “scandal”. Actually, Sea Hearts is another great title that mixes magic and realism to explore the perils of love, desire, and identity in a haunting and devastating way.
The essence of my comment in the post stems from the perception (which I don’t personally subscribe to) that if a book is dark it’s adult (or at least stigmatised) rather than YA. Which is a gatekeeping and “what is YA” argument rather than a reflection on the authors. (Although I do wonder if this then results in authors being more hesitant about writing such content.)
But I am still mulling over it myself, now! I’m also wondering if part of the reason I feel such books are the minority is also a reflection of the current market trend towards paranormal romance. The 90s (maybe even mid 90s-2005?) seems to have been far more abundant in ‘darkness’ and contemporary fiction, and is where you get so many stand-out titles like the ones you’ve mentioned. I’d also add Margaret Clark and Melina Marchetta into that mix.
I’ll also be very interested to see how the new “new adult” category affects this sort of content and classification!
4:34 pm, August 7, 2012
Bravo, Jordi! Your articulation of why you love this novel is as gorgeous as the book itself :)
4:49 pm, August 7, 2012
‘It will make you feel heavier than you thought possible.’
I struggled when I read The Ghost’s Child. Not to read it, it was enthralling and beautiful, but to explain it. I couldn’t grab words that a hundred per cent caught what it was I had read.
Your sentence above is exactly what I felt. It sums up so perfectly just what this book is, and what a book can make you feel.
5:01 pm, August 7, 2012
Thanks for this review, Jordi – zinging final line, and so lovely and convincing I might even have to run out and buy a copy. But do I have to wait until I’m feeling strong? Or in need?
5:16 pm, August 7, 2012
Thanks, Kelly!
And not at all! :) I think The Ghost’s Child will happily break (and fix) anyone at any time. I think if you did wait until you were in need it would resonate more strongly, though.
9:21 am, August 8, 2012
A really beautiful, haunting, and eloquent review the captures the essence of the book. I also appreciate your honesty about your experiences and relationship to the book. Thank you for sharing, Jordi!
12:15 pm, August 8, 2012
Thank you – it was my pleasure! I hope it inspires more people to read… The Ghost’s Child, Sonya Hartnett, YA, and just books in general :)
2:04 pm, August 8, 2012
This book has just shouldered its way onto my incredibly crowded “to be read ASAP” list.
4:54 pm, August 8, 2012
Lovely piece Jordi and great to see a discussion developing on the issue of “dark novels”. Like you, we regularly had to contend with this in my years at the CYL. I know that Penguin thought hard about even publishing SLEEPING DOGS as a YA. Sadly, it is seldom young people who complain but adults and the “gatekeepers”. It always seems to me that these are trying to shield themselves rather than younger readers and also looking for ways to avoid having to openly discuss such books and situations. What so often happens is that such critics latch on to easy targets such as the ONE f… word in Gillian Rubinstein’s BEYOND THE LABYRINTH (this went all the way to the SA Parliament!). And as you and Kate point out there is often also a focus on “issues” rather than the book as a whole and context so SLEEPING DOGS became the “incest book” rather than a broad ranging, fabulous, and very dark, story about a damaged, disintegrating family. I believe this reductive way of looking at fiction is exacerbated by the mining of novels for “issues” in schools – a long held ‘beef’ of mine.
The profound and brilliantly written novels of US writer, John Green, are often attacked for being dark (LOOKING FOR ALASKA and his magnificent recent THE FAULT IN OUR STARS for example). Also in the firing line in the US was the brilliant novelist and play write, Adam Rapp, whose books often deal in dazzling, hallucinatory language with the most marginalised young people. Try SNOWFISH 33, UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG and PUNKZILLA. Rubinstein was so shocked by the vicious responses to her book,her “oldest” one at the time, that she said she would not write for older readers anymore and has only done so since as Lian Hearn.
Books are easy targets. Parents or “concerned citizens”,can force a book to be removed from a library. John Marsden’s LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE was attacked here and in the US. Not so easy to get a violent or mysogynistic movie removed.
An important discussion to have and difficult to find anywhere to have it in a measured way.
3:41 pm, August 9, 2012
Thank you, Agnes. Personally, what I find most upsetting is that in screening such books to “protect” teens, it not only makes them less accessible to those who really need it, it adds a stigma to the texts which then further stigmatises and alienates the very teens in need who relate to them.
Last year’s #YAsaves online discussion highlighted this, but it is a neverending issue which, as you say, doesn’t get enough airplay.
9:33 am, August 9, 2012
Fabulous review, Jordi – and your website is great, too!
12:57 pm, August 9, 2012
I loved your heartfelt and poignant review of this book Jordi.
As an adult reader, there is something very powerful about the way YA books such as these can resonate with all of our inner teenager and evoke what can sometimes be nostalgic emotions. Thank you for making me add this title to my TBR list. :)
3:45 pm, August 9, 2012
Thank you Heath, Liz, and Emma! (And it certainly deserves to be at the top of the TBR pile ;) )
Pingback: ‘Net News: 20th August 2012 « Read alert | State Library of Victoria