The White Girl by Tony Birch

​     I love reading internationally and Australia is usually good for a terrifying outback adventure, but this is something completely different…a story that takes the readers back in time and presents life in the country from an Aboriginal perspective.
    That alone should tell you it isn’t going to be a conventionally happy story or an easy read. Since historical events are the same world-over for people who recognize patterns, the living conditions of the Aboriginal people of Australia should surprise no one, for they strongly echo those of The First People in Canada or Native Americans in the US. The white men came and imposed they rule, the local natives were brutally forced into submission, assimilation, etc. Deprived of basic rights. Made second class citizens, at best. It’s horrific, deplorable and (for the misanthropes, at least) all too accurately representative of the ways of the world.
    In Australia in 1960/1961 when this novel takes place, The Aboriginal people were more or less at the mercy of the merciless state, subjugated, oppressed, and limited in many ways of life. This is a story of one such family, a grandmother, Odette, and her beloved twelve-year-old granddaughter, Sissy. Sissy’s mother never told anyone who Sissy’s father was, she had her daughter young and then took off. Whoever he was, he was obviously a white man, so the girl grew up blonde and with fair enough of a complexion to pass for a titular white girl. It is this crucial fact that allows Odette to make a desperate play for freedom from under the thumb of the fascist-like new local police officer and, pretending to be her grandchild’s nanny, take them both to the city, to try to find a happier fate.
      This might be the first story I’ve read told from an Aboriginal perspective and it was as emotionally devastating, engaging and poignant as a story like that ought to be. Such a great character driven drama with such likable, strong, compelling characters. A quiet story in a way, but one that really draws you in and makes for an excellent read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.