When her mother dies from a snakebite, Comity’s life in the Australian outback changes forever. As her father retreats into his work, Comity turns to Fred, the Aboriginal yard boy, who becomes her only friend. But then a new assistant arrives who delights in playing cruel games. As Fred becomes his target, events spiral dangerously out of control.
This is the third Carnegie book I have read so far and although I’m not allowed to say which book I think should win the award but I think eventually you’ll be able to figure out which one I like best.
On the whole, I really enjoyed this book! It really had its highs and its lows but the lows really made the highs worthwhile. I will go into a lot more detail now don’t you worry.
Contradicting myself above, there isn’t really a lot I can say about this book. It took me a long time to read. A lot longer than it should’ve done in comparison with another book the exact same size. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, I think half of the plot was a bit irrelevant and we could’ve done without it. Also, that would’ve left so much room for stretching out the end scenes which I really enjoyed.
One thing I’d really like to point out is, at the beginning of the book, there is a picture of a grave and I really liked that (not that there was a grave, the fact that there was a picture.) However, that seemed to be the only picture in the book and I found that to be such a shame as that would’ve been a really great addition to the book. That might have just been my school’s copy of the book because I’ve heard there are too editions. I was disappointed with the lack of pictures but let’s focus on the writing now shall we?
I can definitely understand why Geraldine McCaughrean was chosen to write the sequel to Peter Pan as they way in which she writes is very fluid and descriptive. The descriptions she wrote in The Middle of Nowhere were really true to the Australian terrain and I think she did a really good job of making a book that is set in a deserted place seem really interesting!
I am generally not such a big fan of books that are set in Australian or African communities as I find them really hard to visualise and unfortunately I had that problem again, perhaps that’s just me but I really tried this time! I think I found the sheer number of characters the hardest thing to visualise as none of these side characters had any traits about them, they were simply just names that the reader was expected to remember. I didn’t find myself attached to any of the characters which is a shame as I think if more time was spent evolving the scenes instead of constantly referring back to the same old thing.
One thing I really enjoyed about this book was the amount of history and culture that was encased in this book. At the beginning of this book was a whole other language that was really real and was woven seamlessly into the stories. I really enjoyed flicking back and forth between the language translator and the actual story. It really added another layer to the story.
I think this story was really good for a lesson about morals for children but personally, for me, this wasn’t my cup of tea. I gave this a 3/5 stars because I really loved and appreciated all of the effort that went into researching this book. Thank you so much for reading this! All of my social media links are down below, including the Goodreads link for The Middle of Nowhere so go and check those out!
I will have another post up really soon! Talk to y’all later!
The Middle of Nowhere Goodreads- http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18684394-the-middle-of-nowhere
My Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/38362004-caitlin
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