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Apr. 28th, 2015 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI keep thinking of Francesca Forrest's Pen Pal as a fairy tale, even though, technically, it might not even be fantasy. It's almost realist fiction, except for all the ways in which plausibility is absolutely not the point.
(Though, I mean, one protagonist has a superintelligent pet crow and an increasingly personal relationship with a volcano goddess, and the other one occasionally sees ghosts and receives messages from the ocean, so, I mean, it's not entirely realist. The volcano goddess is pretty amazing. For the record.)
Anyway! Em is a twelve-year-old girl living in a tiny Gulf Coast community that exists half in the water, determinedly isolated from the mainland and dedicated to its own sea-rooted stories and traditions. Em decides she wants a pen pal, so she sends out a message in a bottle, just to see where it goes.
It goes to Kaya, whose pet crow picks it up and brings it to her where she's hanging out in an isolated platform over a volcano. Kaya's a political prisoner; a member of a cultural and religious minority, she tried to revive a banned religious festival which happens to be associated with a revolutionary separatist movement, and her national government did not take it well at all.
Fortunately, Kaya is in possession of a degree from a U.S. university with attendant English-language skills, not to mention a lot of free time, and therefore is happy to start a correspondence with Em! PEN PAL TIME.
A hurricane puts Em's community at risk of being permanently sunk by the US government. The increasing volcanic activity around Kaya fans the flames of her community's conflict with their government. The emphatic drawing of the symbolic lines is probably why I think of it as a fairy tale. And, like a fairy tale, the book is about transformations and revolutions -- the emphasis of the book is not only on revolution but on the ways that friendship itself can become a revolutionary act, how people can reach out to make a profound difference to each other even when they can't seem to help themselves. Definitely recommended.
(Though, I mean, one protagonist has a superintelligent pet crow and an increasingly personal relationship with a volcano goddess, and the other one occasionally sees ghosts and receives messages from the ocean, so, I mean, it's not entirely realist. The volcano goddess is pretty amazing. For the record.)
Anyway! Em is a twelve-year-old girl living in a tiny Gulf Coast community that exists half in the water, determinedly isolated from the mainland and dedicated to its own sea-rooted stories and traditions. Em decides she wants a pen pal, so she sends out a message in a bottle, just to see where it goes.
It goes to Kaya, whose pet crow picks it up and brings it to her where she's hanging out in an isolated platform over a volcano. Kaya's a political prisoner; a member of a cultural and religious minority, she tried to revive a banned religious festival which happens to be associated with a revolutionary separatist movement, and her national government did not take it well at all.
Fortunately, Kaya is in possession of a degree from a U.S. university with attendant English-language skills, not to mention a lot of free time, and therefore is happy to start a correspondence with Em! PEN PAL TIME.
A hurricane puts Em's community at risk of being permanently sunk by the US government. The increasing volcanic activity around Kaya fans the flames of her community's conflict with their government. The emphatic drawing of the symbolic lines is probably why I think of it as a fairy tale. And, like a fairy tale, the book is about transformations and revolutions -- the emphasis of the book is not only on revolution but on the ways that friendship itself can become a revolutionary act, how people can reach out to make a profound difference to each other even when they can't seem to help themselves. Definitely recommended.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-29 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-04-29 03:20 am (UTC)I recommend it very, very highly. It contains passages like this. The combination of the political with the numinous is incredibly well done.
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Date: 2015-04-29 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-04-29 12:32 pm (UTC)Oof. I loved them both so much -- and that letter at the end, Kaya thinking about the choices she had to make in terms of how she would explain them to Em, it punched me repeatedly in the heart in the very best way.
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Date: 2015-04-29 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-02 07:13 pm (UTC)WANT.