A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
Charity Shop: St David's Hospice
Charity: St David’s Hospice is a local charity providing end of life care, free of charge, to adult patients from across North West Wales and supporting those closest to them.
Price: 50p bargain!
Book Blurb: Adventure and Survival in a world inhabited by wild animals, and by the spirits of the dead // Nhamo is an unloved and unwanted orphan who determines to flee her village rather than face a hateful marriage. Alone for the first time in her life, she paddles upriver towards Zimbabwe in her canoe. On her long and terrifying journey she is in constant danger from wild animals, and fears the spirits of the dead - both benign and destructive - that crowd around her and need to be appeased. // A girl named disaster is an enthralling adventure story. But it is also a deeply moving and heartwarming account of unquenchable courage against appaling odds, and of Nhamo's rite of passage from childhood in a traditional African village to independent young woman in the modern world.
Expectation: I chose this book because I thought I'd read it before. I was sure she ended up in the man made lake so big you couldn't see across it. However the blurb had no mention of that , so I might have been thinking of a different book.
Reality: A good adventure book, about half and half back story and journey. She does indeed end up in the lake but otherwise I didn't recognise the book. Nhamo is a girl who has extreme bad luck and extreme good luck in equal thus it is very obviously a fiction book set within a historical backdrop.
Overall Rating
It was a struggle 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Gripping page
to make it turner
As my Granny would say 'It was a bit far-fetched' but none-the-less a gripping read. I sat down to read one chapter and ended up reading half the book.
Twist Scale:
Knew the beginning, As twisty as the
middle and end 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 bendy wendy road
from the first line
It was an adventure story but I knew three things from the off 1) that she left her village, 2) that she ended up in the lake and 3) that she didn't die in the end. This meant that the big twists weren't all that surprising and although the story didn't go in a nice straight line nothing happened that was a huge surprise.
Tear-jerker Scale:
It was an adventure story but I knew three things from the off 1) that she left her village, 2) that she ended up in the lake and 3) that she didn't die in the end. This meant that the big twists weren't all that surprising and although the story didn't go in a nice straight line nothing happened that was a huge surprise.
Tear-jerker Scale:
As dry as a house 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Cried an ocean
throughout
There were definitely very sad bits in the story and maybe I just wasn't in the mood for emotional involvement but I stayed detached the whole way through, no tears here.
Main Character(s): Nhamo - an absolute genius orphan child. Incredible at picking up and learning survival tools. Never feeling fully included Nhamo enjoys her own company, particularly having tea parties with her dead mother. Although she chats away to her mother, Crocodile Guts and other spirits she is aware of her loneliness on her journey and has the very human desire to be part of a community.
Moral of the Story: All things spiritual can be explained away be coincidences and science but there are a few too many coincidences thus implying that the spiritual dimension could still exist... Imo the book doesn't make any conlusive judgement.
There were definitely very sad bits in the story and maybe I just wasn't in the mood for emotional involvement but I stayed detached the whole way through, no tears here.
Main Character(s): Nhamo - an absolute genius orphan child. Incredible at picking up and learning survival tools. Never feeling fully included Nhamo enjoys her own company, particularly having tea parties with her dead mother. Although she chats away to her mother, Crocodile Guts and other spirits she is aware of her loneliness on her journey and has the very human desire to be part of a community.
Moral of the Story: All things spiritual can be explained away be coincidences and science but there are a few too many coincidences thus implying that the spiritual dimension could still exist... Imo the book doesn't make any conlusive judgement.
***
Coming up: Tune in next time to find out :-)
In my life: there are so many questions and answers that somehow seem wrong... There's a place for Les Mis everywhere. Anyway, I've had my own adventure in my life this week. I not only fainted at work, but fainted from standing in an area full of people where I was pretty much the only female around, and managed to catch my head on the table on the way down. So if you think you've embarrassed yourself in the past, I may have just succeeded in embarrassing myself even more! I walked away from the incident with a superficial headwound requiring stapling (ouch) but nothing more serious.
In my life: there are so many questions and answers that somehow seem wrong... There's a place for Les Mis everywhere. Anyway, I've had my own adventure in my life this week. I not only fainted at work, but fainted from standing in an area full of people where I was pretty much the only female around, and managed to catch my head on the table on the way down. So if you think you've embarrassed yourself in the past, I may have just succeeded in embarrassing myself even more! I walked away from the incident with a superficial headwound requiring stapling (ouch) but nothing more serious.
