Reviewed by Emma Crowley
She dreamed of finding a new life…
Georgetown, Guyana 1970. Seven-year-old Rita is running wild in her ramshackle white wooden house by the sea, under the indulgent eye of her absent-minded father. Surrounded by her army of stray pets, free to play where she likes and climb the oleander trees, she couldn’t feel more alive.
But then her new stepmother Chandra arrives and the house empties of love and laughter. Rita’s pets are removed, her freedom curtailed, and before long, there’s a new baby sister on the way. There’s no room for Rita anymore.
With her father distracted by his new family, Rita spends more time alone in her bedroom. Desperate to fill up the hollow inside her, she begins to talk to the only photo she has of her mother Cassie, a woman she cannot remember.
Rita has never known what happened to Cassie, a poor farmer’s daughter from the remote Guyanese rainforest. Determined to find the truth, Rita travels to find her mother’s family in an unfamiliar land of shimmering creeks and towering vines. She finds comfort in the loving arms of her grandmother among the flowering shrubs and trees groaning with fruit. But when she discovers the terrible bruising secret that her father kept hidden from her, will she ever be able to feel happiness again?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Faraway Girl to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Faraway Girl sees Sharon Maas returning to the exotic South American country of Guyana, the setting of some of her earlier books. Instantly I knew that this would be a very good read and the more the book progressed I could tell that the author felt so comfortable writing in this setting because she was using her own memories of the country and she knew it so very well. She recreated a world that was part of her and it showed. In the end notes she mentions how her last few books required a lot of research because they were set in Europe during the war but here it was easier as she was delving back into her memories. I sense this story just flowed onto the page whilst she was writing it and that she enjoyed the time spent writing about Rita. I did enjoy her last few books set in Europe but I just felt it just wasn’t what the author was used to writing about and at times it showed.
Now we are back on familiar territory and The Faraway Girl is a brilliant coming of age story that transport you to an alluring, colourful, vivid country yet one with its own history and struggles. Similar to the difficulties and confusion that abound for Rita. Rita is an incredible character and it’s testament to such brilliant, engrossing writing that you do connect with her so much given for most of the novel she is a young girl and then we follow her teenage years. She lives with her father Jitty in Georgetown, her mother Cassie having died when she was a baby. Rita is of mixed race and this is something that presents many challenges and questions for her as the years pass by and we journey with her through ups and downs ad struggles both physical and emotional.
She is only six when we are first introduced to her but it’s easy to see she has an indominable spirit. She is fiery, self-sufficient and her love for all creatures great and small is evident with every turn of the page. Rita is more or less allowed to run feral and do what she wants. She is not your typical young girl but yet there is something that really draws the reader into her world and her mind. She is confused over not knowing her mother. She hates the fact that her father is so absent both in mind and body and promises are always broken. Rita is a survivor. She has learnt to go out there on her own into the gardens and the surrounding neighbourhood and fend for herself to explore and discover what is on offer to her inquisitive mind. These areas are what shape and mould her and the children she meets and the friends she makes and then perhaps distances herself from all really add to Rita’s story.
Yet there is also a softer side to her, one which she reluctantly shows every know and again. When Jitty introduces Chandra, as her new stepmother, she feels even more abandoned as if she doesn’t matter to anyone anymore. Chandra imposes rules and regulations and tries to curb the free spirit that is Rita. She does not like to be controlled or curtailed. This complex, deep and meaningful need within her really needs to be listened in order to understand and have her questions answered but this is never forthcoming.
Every so often we have chapters from Jitty’s viewpoint where he recollects his history, and he too struggled since he was left in the care of his grandma when his family were killed in a car accident. We learn how he met Cassie and theirs is an intriguing but problematic love story as they have to deal with family traditions, rules and regulations that impose on their unity. It was fascinating to read about this because it helped me understood even more what Rita was experiencing and really how Jitty couldn’t open up and tell his daughter everything she desperately needed to know in order to make sense of her place in the world. She couldn’t understand why Jitty was so secretive, forgetful and never spoke of her mother. He has deep secrets, hidden flaws, and has made slips ups and bad decisions. Yet for most of the book he does not seem to feel an urgent need to rectify them in order to help Rita. Instead this tough, caustic, defensive attitude of self preservation increases within Rita as she grows older and she battles with her identity. This really comes across in the friendships and relationships she forms and it is hard to read her and understand some of her actions.
I found at times the book went off on tangents away from the main plot and normally this would really frustrate me as quite often said tangents add nothing to the overall story but rather detract from it. Here this wasn’t the case at all but rather it added to the overall picture being built up. The insight into Jitty every so often helped mould the plot even further as we came to know more about his mannerisms, upbringing and his mind and it was truly fascinating. Similar to Rita he battles with his conscience and what he knows is the right thing to do but he doesn’t listen to his mind and follow the right path. Instead he has created confusion and Rita’s quest to understand her family, her heritage and her own sense of self only further intensifies instead of her being told the truth which would allow comfort, acceptance and a new stage of her life to begin. Rita has always felt like a slice of her life is missing and if you have this solidity in your own life you wonder how she must feel. But her feelings and emotions do jump off the page and sharing her diary entries with the reader really helps with this.
When Rita comes to know of her family in Pomeroon, an area deep in rural Guyana, she believes finding the spirit of her mother will provide her with the answers she seeks. That branch of the family have tried to communicate in the past and there is certainly something there that she needs to discover but it has been shut off from her for so long. Through Jitty’s actions of non contact or Rita’s refusal to meet an aunt who lives in Georgetown, either way in the later half of the book Rita’s remarkable journey takes many turns as she journeys to the Pomeroon.
Here the author’s vivid descriptions of a country so colourful and exotic and so vastly different to ours really help us understand the experiences and emotions Rita is going through. The countryside is vast and filled with sights, sounds, animals and visions Rita has had no experience of. Why was she so cut off from everything? Why has Jitty been such a closed book when it comes to her mother? Why can he not provide her with the answers and peace of mind she deserves? Will Rita experience something there that will transform her thought process and take her in a direction she never deemed possible? I loved the scenes set in Pomeroon, you could see the changes occurring within Rita that were also manifesting themselves on the outside. Her sense of worthlessness disappears and although the path she still has to thread remains difficult and mired with obstacles she may have the strength to reach the other side. The Faraway Girl was a wonderful story and for me I feel Sharon Maas has returned to top form. More like this please in the future.
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