A Good Read: Book Reviews

A Good Read

December’s selection from book reviewer Willow Coby Patsy – Nicole The Boy at the Back of the Class – Onjali Q Dennis-Benn Rauf Patsy grew up in an In a similar vein we have a story for children impoverished town in about what it is like to be a stranger in a strange Jamaica and land. The difference here is that Ahmet is not an struggles to make economic migrant, but a refugee, fleeing civil war ends meet, raising in Syria. her five-year-old He arrives one day at the start of term and sits daughter, Tru. But in a chair at the back of the class and carries a she has a dream. A tattered old red backpack. He is quiet and dream that lies across spends break and lunchtime in Seclusion. The 9 the ocean in a city and ¾-year-old narrator and their friends don’t that never sleeps, know why he stays apart and are determined to watched over by Lady find out why. When they finally learn of Ahmet’s Liberty. She isn’t the story, they are determined to help him and seek only one. Many have the help of the one person in the country that left Jamaica for they know can help: The Queen. America, sending home details of their new lives. A moving story, The Boy at the Back of the But you can’t just leave Jamaica and head to the Class directly challenges US. When Patsy is finally granted a visa, it is attitudes towards refugees only a visitor one. And just for her, not Tru. and the children encounter

And so, leaving her daughter behind with her adults who are sympathetic previously absent father, she begins her life as towards his plight, but also an undocumented migrant. It soon becomes those who are not. Simple clear that life in New York is not what she thought events show the kindness it would be. of strangers (the gift of a

Dennis-Benn has created an engrossing novel pomegranate) and gives showing the reality of the plight of migrants. hope that this next Spanning a decade, it switches between Patsy generation can be the one and her new life and Tru’s childhood as she to bring in a change of grows up without her mother. It says something attitude and a realisation about her skills as a writer that she has created a that we are all one central character that is so flawed and yet humanity. All too often we likeable at the same time. The dialogue switches are quick to judge – and Rauf effortlessly between English and Jamaican uses a very clever technique to bring this to the patois, leaving you, the reader, as an inhabitant fore, leaving the reader re-evaluating everything of the two worlds that Patsy herself occupies. Will they have read with just a few pages to go –she ever be reunited with her daughter and how rather than accepting. Ahmet’s story is sadly not does a decision taken so long ago affect the two just a story created in an author’s imagination but of them as life moves on around them in two is one that too many children are experiencing vastly different countries? – tattered backpack and all.

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