Author(s): Helena Fox

Teenagers | Léa's Book Talkers | Children's Book Council of Australia Awards Shortlist

A powerful, lyrical novel about friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, love and our hopeless, hopeful world from the award-winning author of How It Feels to Float. 

George's life is loud. On the water, though, with everything hushed above and below, George is steady, silent. Then her estranged dad says he needs to talk and George's past begins to wake, looping around her ankles, trying to drag her under. But there's no time to sink.

George's best friend, Tess, is about to become a teen mum, her friend Laz is in deep climate grief, her gramps keeps losing all his things, and her mums fill the house with fuss and chatter.

Before long, heat and smoke join the noise as distant wildfires begin to burn. Everything is loud, blazing, messy. Could Calliope, the girl who has just cartwheeled into George's world and shot it through with dazzling colour, be her calm amidst the chaos?

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: Léa

I wish I had Helena Fox’s talent of finding compelling words to tell you just how brilliant this book is. Evocative is the best word I can think of to describe her writing. Her use of stream of consciousness, lyrical writing conjures beautiful images to describe a turmoil of complex feelings.

Muted sounds through peaceful water, soft colours of the sun rising through foggy harbour and a poor soul adrift. Both the title and the cover of this book already set the tone. It captures perfectly the atmosphere of Helena Fox’s story. It is utterly poetic and yet, just a modern tale of people navigating the modern world. 

When she needs to escape her loud and lively surroundings, George usually goes for a run or a paddle on the water.. To me the cacophonous household and bickering friends seemed like a cheerful slice of animated life but the loudness of it all is what is keeping George quiet, her own voice buried under. Everyone and everything is demanding her attention with their own luggage heavy of worries and anxieties. Overwhelmed, she is somehow stuck on the outside of her own life and probably of herself too.