posted on 16 Dec 2015

Tall Story by Candy Gourlay

This is a story with a very engaging blend of ordinariness and magic with underlying themes of home, family and friends that provides the book with a tight and principled structure. I like the way that both  parents are given a realistic back story - they are nurses working long hours and double shifts at the hospital to be able to make ends meet. The main female protagonist is their daughter, thirteen year old Andi, and she comments wryly on their various peculiarities with affection and exasperation.

Home life is busy and complicated, as is most people's, and this glimpse into a familiar family landscape will ring bells for most readers. Andi is small for her age but is a talented basketball player who is determined to make her mark at her new school, which is quite a challenge as they only have a boys basketball team. However, she is faced with other problems when her long lost half brother Bernando, aged sixteen, arrives from the Phillipines to live in England. He had been left behind by their mother who had come to work in this country and she had only been able to keep a long distance relationship by phone or the occasional visit. I would imagine that there are many people who have faced similar problems and have had to battle with the long process of applying for relatives to join them. Gourlay manages to make the reader reflect about the pain of this separation and also the pressure of living in a country at the mercy of natural disasters.

Although Andi is curious to meet her brother and excited on behalf of her mother and stepfather, she is not at all impressed when she realises that she will have to share a bedroom until his room is ready. At first she finds him to be a bit of a nuisance and potentially highly embarrassing - because he is eight feet tall. Everybody stares and points as they travel home from the airport on the tube and during the journey he dramatically collapses. After emergency investigation at the hospital, Andi is told by her mother that Bernardo's size and other medical  problems are being caused by a growth on his pituitary gland.

However, Bernando has a fascinating back story that explains his unusual height very differently. We learn that he believes it to be the result of a curse from the daughter of the village witch, a girl who later died when bitten by her rabid dog after a physical struggle with Bernando. The demise of the powerful witch and her daughter is a huge relief for the villagers and they afterwards regard him as a lucky charm whose giant like stature protects everyone from earthquakes. He shares his name with a legendary giant who performed the same protective function for the village hundreds of years before, so when Bernando leaves for England, the local population are desperately worried. When a terrible earthquake devastates the region shortly after his departure, this only confirms his fears and adds to his guilt.

This is a story about fear of the unknown. For Bernando it is about coming to terms with his new responsibilities - being sixteen in an unfamiliar new country is difficult enough in itself. He experiences homesickness for his very different life thousands of miles away and makes several clumsy domestic blunders with unfamiliar appliances in his new home. It is also about fear of people who are different from the average as his physical size can't be ignored.

He is, however, able to deal with this in a very practical way. When some younger children laugh at him and actually kick him, calling him 'Shrek' in an abusive way, he turns the situation to his advantage:

' Not Shrek! Shrek is ogre. He have horns!' Then he beat his chest like Hercules. ' I am GIANT!'

Most children that he meets are curious about the way he looks but soon embrace the difference, as usually happens in the real world. Without spoiling the story, Andi and Bernardo become firm friends and the novel ends on an optimistic note that makes you feel he will be successful and very happy with his life in England.

This is a really good read that provides detailed information about life in the Phillipines and raises lots of interesting questions about why such regions are relatively invisible to people in the Western world. For instance, when the earthquake happens and is reported on the morning television news, children at the school seem completely unaware of it.  

I believe this book is used to good effect in schools, often as a result of a visit from the very entertaining and enthusiastic author who speaks passionately about the importance of depicting children from a range of backgrounds in children's literature. But the ethnic background of her child characters is never tokenistic because they are three dimensional in terms of being kind, funny, cross and self centred - like all children whatever their background. We come to know them very well through lots of passages of direct speech and insight into their thoughts. I haven't read anything else by this competent and confident storyteller yet but I am very much looking forward to doing so.

 

Karen Argent

16th December 2015