Wild Song
Candy Gourlay
David Fickling Books

This brilliantly written book is a companion to the author’s Bone Talk. It transports us back to 1904 and is set in the same world but herein the focus is on Luki and it’s her voice that tells the story as if she’s speaking to her mother who has been dead for a year.

Having lived her life in the mountains of the Philippines with her people, the Bontok tribe, Luki has reached the age where it’s expected by the tribal elders that she should marry her best friend Samkad. However, instead she wants to be a warrior. So, she decides to leave her village home and accepts Truman Hunt’s offer to go to America to be part of the World Fair in St Louis. Missouri. It will be a grand adventure, she tells herself.

However, despite America being called the land of opportunities this isn’t the case for everyone and after an arduous journey by train and by foot, Luki is effectively trapped in the Igorot Village. She’s made to feel dehumanised by having to perform serious rituals as entertainment: we Bontok people are exhibits, she realises losing her trust in Truman Hunt and strongly suspecting he’s only interested in making money out of them.

It really feels as though we are inside Luki’s head living her aspirations, her doubts, her reluctant acceptance of the truth about those she meets including someone she thought had become a close friend. I felt myself gripped by such emotions as hopefulness, fear, shock, disgust, horror and shame. Shame because although this book is set in America in the last century, here in the UK even now, people who are considered ‘different’ for whatever reason be it way of life, appearance or skin colour, are subjected to appalling racial attitudes.

Utterly compelling, this novel will maintain its intense grip on you be you an adult reader or a youngster. Girls especially will understand the dilemma of those among them who, like Luki, try to balance a respect for their cultural and religious traditions with the constraints these may impose on them in today’s world.

Unmissable! And make sure you read the ‘What happened next’ pages at the back of the book.