Nowhere Island by Tania Unsworth

Nowhere Island by Tania Unsworth
Buy Nowhere Island by Tania Unsworth at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: Seeking a kind of asylum in a place normally associated with speed, four kids fetch up on the same mid-highway patch of land. The fact they don't go full feral and prove to not deserve a decent future there is but one of many plus points here.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 240	Date: August 2023
Publisher: Zephyr
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781804540084
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Meet Gil. Just twelve, he is so determined to escape the care system – the system that constantly puts him in futureless places that are not homes – and find a home for himself. He is en route to yet another fosterer, when he jumps into an anonymous car, and lets it ride him to his future. That future seems to be in jeopardy when someone steals his one bag of belongings – but that someone lives with his brother in a camp on an island between the two directions of a motorway, a place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough to provide for their safety and seclusion. Them, and a mute girl also finding a home there, albeit so much more successfully. Over a few weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combine, or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work…

Reading that kind of summary, and knowing the lead is in care, may make you think of Lord of the Flies but with privileged kids whingeing about what they've missed out on and seeing nothing as their fault. This is so much better than that. Yes, it contains a kind of tribalism to some tiny extent – the lads before Gil turns up not getting on at all with the wordless girl. But the care system has been left out enough, too, meaning any child of any derivation with a thought to a way to find their own path in life will be able to engage and empathise with this.

The other way that this is not comparable with what we think Lord of the Flies to be like, at least, is that these kids are everyday ones. Yes, the girl is an ace with a slingshot, and knows a lot of survival skills, but the high drama here comes not from them being ridiculously inventive, indestructible or indeed feral. And high drama there is, meaning this kind of short novel packs a decent punch, especially in its closing scenes.

All told, this is mature escapist fun. It doesn't pretend any of these children have a destiny they must go in search of, but they are in search of something that is not their past, for their own different reasons. These relatable children have agency, do not sit and bicker for the sake of bickering in lieu of plot, but neither are they the great adult, carefree decision makers they may want to aspire to. Yes, there are issues I think with the fact this seems like it's played out over months and seasons but for all the things telling us it's in a matter of weeks, with reference to things seemingly long past as a few days ago, but little gets called a flaw here. With the girl's unusual relationship – and indeed distinctive past – and all the chutzpah the boys find in themselves, in varying quantities, this is quite the joy.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

Be sure to check out the author's other achievements here. My Life on Fire by Cath Howe has a very different way for a child to lose a lot, if not everything, and also some more mild thievery and unlikely friendships, too.

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