Reviews - Gutter Child | The StoryGraph

345 reviews for:

This book feels cinematic in its scope; both deeply intimate and widely relevant to our present and our past. There are times when you feel the gut-wrenching-umph of truth, as the plotline blurs between events so similar to those you've read about, or heard about, or lived through yourself, and those fictional characters who drive it along. Human strength, beauty, fear, destruction, and ignorance are all bundled up for us in prose that seems to run across the page; clear and smooth. Dystopia offering just enough distance, and like a mirror, insisting we gaze at our reflection

martiangyal's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

thebacklistborrower's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I discovered Jael Richardson during Canada Reads 2020. If you’re a fan, be sure to follow her on Instagram for the best post-show breakdown each day of the debates. It was only after that I learned she is a director for The Festival of Literary Diversity, CBC columnist, and even before writing Gutter Child was a published author (need any more reasons to give her a follow?).

Gutter Child is a book about a world where there are two castes of people: those born “Mainland”, who are white, privileged, and on the winning side of an historic war, and “gutter people”, people of colour, descendants of the losers of that same war, who are born with a portion of an intergenerational debt of war reparations, and live as indentured servants to Mainland folk to repay it.

Elimina is a Gutter Child raised in the Mainland as a social experiment to determine if Gutter people can be civilized. But when her foster family dies, she is sent to a school to prepare her for servitude. It is there that she meets other Gutter people, connects with her cultural history, and sees first hand the racism, classism, and prejudice that she experienced growing up in a white community isn’t only her experience, but it is systemic-- the very foundation of her society.

This was such a good book. Jael builds a deep world and sympathy for Elimina in very little time, allowing the plot progress almost immediately. It was a read that I felt hooked into within pages of starting and it was very hard to put down. Little pieces of exposition into the world and Elimina’s history are scattered both through dialogue and the things left unsaid. As a reader, one can easily draw parallels between the racism, prejudice, and privilege in Mainside to our world, but the book also does not read like a moralistic fable. It definitely stands on its own feet as an excellent story that can also be used as a magnifying glass on our own world.

I’d strongly recommend this book to anybody looking for something engaging, interesting, and satisfying to read.

willowbend's review against another edition

5.0

I really liked this book. It would not have been a book I chose for myself so I feel good when that happens. It speaks to why I love to read. You just never know what might surprise you :) This book speaks to life in general. No matter where you are born or where you live there is always a class system no matter how subtle. How you evolve and grow in that environment is always up to you. Elimina is an inspirational character worthy of getting to know.