The oceans between us by Gill Thompson
Headline Publishing, 2019. ISBN: 9781472257956.
(Age: 16+) Highly recommended. It was 1941. Jack has happy memories
of his mother holding him, as a 5 year old, in her arms, singing and
dancing with him, then hiding with him under the table at the sound
of sirens and German bombers flying over London. But one day whilst
he is at school, there is an explosion, and his whole world is
changed forever. His mother disappears, and Jack ends up in the
dormitories of Melchet House run by the Catholic nuns, a life of
chores and punishments.
Unbeknown to Jack, his mother survived the explosion but was left
with amnesia. She passes her time in a hospital ward desperately
looking for something she is missing, but she doesn't know what it
is.
Life becomes worse for Jack as he becomes one of the thousands of
children shipped to Australia to a promised land of sunshine and
oranges. However, far from being a paradise, Bindoon, the Boys Town,
is a place of hard labour, beatings and abuse. Jack eventually has
an escape, taken to be adopted by Kathleen and John, an Australian
couple unable to have children. But he can't forget the suffering of
the other boys and when his friend Sam dies there, Jack is
determined to one day seek justice.
Thompson's novel brings together many themes: the suffering and
abuse of child migrants brought to Australia and placed in harsh
institutions; Aboriginal children taken from their parents to live a
life of servitude; the racism in Britain towards the Jamaican
immigrants who came on the Windshuttle; the threat of the childhood
disease of polio; and the crude treatment of mental health patients.
The novel paints an authentic picture of the times, and would be of
interest to students studying the history of the period. It
concludes with the apologies of both the British and Australian
prime ministers to the children shipped to Australia as child
migrants, told they were orphans and brought to Australia without
their parents' knowledge or consent.
This book would make an interesting comparison with Jae-Dee Collier's Jae-Dee
survives the home of many mothers (2019), a fictionalised
account drawn from the author's memories of her life as one of the
forgotten children in Australian orphanages, more of a memoir than a
novel. Thompson's story builds a wider context to the experience of
the institutionalised child, yet both share the loneliness and fear
the children suffered, and their longing for kindness and love. Both
stories reveal the long-standing aftereffects of abuse.
That is not to say that The oceans between us is difficult
to read. On the contrary, we are drawn into the lives of the
characters; there is romance, and there are happy as well as sad
moments. I thoroughly recommend it - it keeps the reader engaged
until the very last page.
Helen Eddy