On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu shows how even the most lighthearted story can hide a world of pain.
Location: mostly set in Australia. They start their long journey in Afghanistan and pass through Pakistan and Jakarta on their way to Australia.
On Fragile Waves synopsis
The haunting story of a family of dreamers and tale-tellers looking for home in an unwelcoming world. This exquisite and unusual magic realist debut, told in intensely lyrical prose by an award winning author, traces one girl’s migration from war to peace, loss to loss, home to home.
Firuzeh and her brother Nour are children of fire, born in an Afghanistan fractured by war. When their parents, their Atay and Abay, decide to leave, they spin fairy tales of their destination, the mythical land and opportunities of Australia.
As the family journeys from Pakistan to Indonesia to Nauru, heading toward a hope of home, they must rely on fragile and temporary shelters, strangers both mercenary and kind, and friends who vanish as quickly as they’re found.
When they arrive in Australia, what seemed like a stable shore gives way to treacherous currents. Neighbors, classmates, and the government seek their own ends, indifferent to the family’s fate. For Firuzeh, her fantasy worlds provide some relief, but as her family and home splinter, she must surface from these imaginings and find a new way.
Book review
Firuzeh and Nour grow up with the rich stories told by their parents. Especially Abay is a great storyteller. On their journey to Australia, their family faces many hardships and dangers. The stories provide temporary relief and show a resilience that comes from deep within the storyteller. Each person tells a different story, showing their unique personalities and strengths.
When they reach the island before the coast of Australia, the seriousness of their challenges start to get to you. From a perspective of hope, you read how the parents and other adults drown in the hopelessness of the situation. Slowly the stories told by the adults start to fade and the kids find a way to take over as a way to hold onto who they are.
On Fragile Waves isn’t as haunted or magical as the synopsis suggests: I’d rather say it is more of a psychological novel than anything else. The journey part is told pretty quickly and feels rushed at times. Instead, E. Lily Yu chose to focus more on the story set in Australia. And that part is also my favorite part of the book.
A tiny remark about something that I didn’t particularly like, but got used to: in the chapters that are told from Firuzeh’s perspective, no quotation marks are used when people are talking. This makes you read the story quicker, but also makes it less clear who is saying what. The comments somehow become one as if the whole family is expressing every single sentence together.
Even though On Fragile Waves starts a bit ‘childish’, befitting the age and relative innocence of the kids, it has a way of getting to you when the kids lose their innocence and have to fight for their dreams in Australia. They struggle to find a way that doesn’t forgo their urge to belong, while also facing the reality of their situation. The adults face challenges of their own in this new and unfamiliar world.
The stories that the family members tell change accordingly. Herein lies the strength of On Fragile Waves. If you zoom in on the topic and form of the stories that the family members tell, you can feel what their actions are sometimes hiding. The book has a slight Young Adult feel to it because of the young age of the narrators, but also because of the light tone and the easy sentences. It is a book that reads quickly until you reach the stories that are told in the last third of the book: here you will slow down of your own volition to give a place to the pain expressed in the often lighthearted stories.
Interested?
Pre-order your copy of On Fragile Waves from Amazon (available 2 February 2021).
Book details
Title: On Fragile Waves
Author: E. Lily Yu
Publisher: Erewhon Books
Pages: 288
ISBN13: 9781645660095
Publication date: 2 February 2021
Many thanks to Erewhon Books and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
