anna_hepworth 's review for:

The Nowhere Child by Christian White

2.0

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Author had a range of interesting ideas, but they didn't gel into a story that worked for me. About a third of the way through, I skipped to the end to find out where things get to, and concluded that the plot was at least interesting enough to find out how it got from where I was to where it was going.

Plot was strong, world-building was a bit shaky and kept throwing me out of the story; characters mostly didn't read like people (and the way that ephemeral characters seemed to be almost caricatures based on physical characteristics was disconcerting); writing is strong but wasn't enough to support the issues with world-building and characterisation.

Two examples of my issues with the characterisation:

1. we learn that one character is African-American because we get to read a personals ad that they have put in a 'looking for love' column; there was nothing else that I noticed that gave me any sense of 'race' other than 'white' (split into 'Australian' and 'American') for any of the other characters.
   This is one of the characters that dies onscreen, in what seemed a completely irrelevant scene
2. One older woman is introduced and characterised as fat and slovenly, mostly so that a later character can be compared to her, and some unkind comparisons drawn. 

I found the quality of the writing off putting, given that the book had a literary prize sticker on the front; I would have been less judgemental about it had I realised that it was a prize for an unpublished manuscript, and thus would have been holding it to a different standard. I would still have had the same response, but I wouldn't have had the 'how the hell did this get a literary award' response. 

The plot was very convoluted. I realise that real life is messy, but this was too convoluted for my preferences, particularly when

a story about discovering that you were kidnapped as a child gets a couple of murders thrown in, almost for funsies.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Kidnapping, Murder

Minor: Child abuse, Child death, Fatphobia, Miscarriage, Death of parent

I'm pretty sure I've missed some content warnings. A significant plot line has to do with a fundamentalist Christian church and their teachings, as well as

mention of at least two 'exorcisms' done, one to a queer teenage boy to drive the homosexuality out, and the other to a pregnant unmarried young woman which causes her to miscarry. There are references to other, possibly true, events where similar treatments around the USA have killed young children.