WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW
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| “I am nothing. I feel like nothing. I want my life to matter. What if one day I'm gone and nobody ever knew I existed?”- Friday Brown, Vikki Wakefield |
Friday gets initiated into the group, but her relationship with Arden is precarious, which puts Friday-and anyone who befriends her-at risk. With the threat of a dangerous confrontation looming, Friday has to decide between returning to her isolated, transient life, or trying to help the people she's come to care about-if she can still make it out alive.
I have been wanting to read this book for a while now, ever since reading On the Jellicoe Road actually (that review was, interestingly enough, also when I said I wanted to try another Aussie YA classic, Graffiti Moon, which, as you know, is now one of my favorite books ever). I was intrigued by this book given the surface level similarities in its plot to On the Jellicoe Road, but was frustrated by the lack of availability in America. And then, while searching it on the iBooks store, I realized that the reason why I could never find it was because I was looking for the wrong book- in America, it was published as Friday Never Leaving, not Friday Brown. No idea why, especially since Friday Brown has a better ring to it, but hey, maybe the American audience doesn't really like it when titles are the name of the main character? Regardless, I was happy to have found the book if a little annoyed that I was looking in the wrong place the whole time.
Whatever. I'm still going to call it Friday Brown because I'm ornery. I still put both titles in the blog title so others don't get confused the way I did.
Anyway, it took me a bit to really get into this book. There was just something... missing about the writing that made it hard for me to connect with the writing and the characters. It wasn't bad by any means, and there were some things about it that I kind of really loved, but again, it just took me a while to really connect with. Maybe it's the fact that the main character is kind of bland. She has more of a reader based personality than a writer based, if that makes sense, and most of my impressions of her seem given by me as opposed to given to me.
The first half of the books strikes me as not great, but a necessary evil. Wakefield needed to have that first half take place in the city so she could establish the characters and give the reader time to grow attached to them or at least get a feel for who they are. I admit, I don't think the novel would have worked as well if it was just the second half in the ghost town and I would be confused as to why the characters are acting the way they do or why we should care what happens to them. Still, it was a bit boring and kind of mundane and the characters themselves also don't really shine until the second half.
But it was smart of Wakefield to tackle two very different settings- both an urban one and a rural one. It's always fascinating, in a Lord of the Flies sort of way, to see how characters react when taken out of their element, especially when taken out of civilization entirely. I mean, it's not unique, and the same thing can basically be seen in shows like LOST or the new uptick in YA of wilderness survival camp books. But in this book it's done particularly well, especially given that Wakefield has such a diverse cast of characters to look at. Though some of the reactions were a bit repetitive, like the city kids all being afraid of the town, we get to see an interesting change in dynamics between the group and Friday. In the city, she is the fish out of water, the one needing to be taught how to survive urban life. In the country, she is the expert, the one who actually knows what she's doing and has to teach these city kids how to do it.
That being said, the only characters I ever felt any real connection to were Friday, Silence, and Arden. All three intrigued me, and I was curious to see how each would develop over the course of the novel. The other characters struck me as being wasted potential. It would have been interesting if Wakefield expanded upon the backstories and character of AiAi, Joe, Carrie, Bree, Malik, and Darcy. I mean, I understood the point of Darcy, the bitch that got redeemed, but Carrie's position as a motherly figure could have been elaborated upon, Joe had unseen potential as the comic relief the book could have used (I'm one of those people who always needs some sort of comic relief in my books), Bree could have been Friday's best gal pal, etc. The only two characters that struck me as kind of superfluous were Malik and AiAi. I did kind of understand the point of Malik, being the sociopath bodyguard/boyfriend of Arden, and he had a surface level interesting character but didn't seem fleshed out enough to be wholly interesting. AiAi was probably meant to be some kind of morality pet, but we already had Silence as the morality pet, we didn't need him too.
I didn't start really liking Friday, however, until we got more into the second part and the climax. I did always like Silence though, and found Arden an interesting character. Ever since she came on to the scene, I was intrigued by her and how she controlled the people under her care, though I wished Wakefield went more in depth into her backstory, why she chose cutting hair to assert dominance, her and her family, etc.
Despite these criticisms, this book still gets a high score, or at least a higher score than On the Jellicoe Road. Why? Because the things Wakefield does well are done very, very well, so well in fact that I can forgive the things I didn't like as much. There were times in this novel, the climax especially, that I was glued to the book, and that made up for the times when it was obvious she was just doing something for the sake of the plot, like the quickly abandoned father story arc. I would love to read more Vikki Wakefield novels, though unfortunately many are not available in my tiny and obscure home country. Still, if I ever do come across any of her books, I'll probably pick them up. I get the impression that in Australia she's the discount Melina Marchetta, but this book worked for me in a way that On the Jellicoe Road didn't.
8-8.5 out of 10
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