A wreck of seabirds by Karleah Olson

Briony’s sister, Sarah disappeared over a year ago and she has struggled with depression and self-blame ever since, so when she sees a boy around her age standing in the sea, weeping she knows he is in a bad place and reaches out to him. Ren has returned to their small seaside town about 2 hours from Perth to be carer for his father who has dementia but his grief is for Sam, his younger brother who was drowned some time earlier. The story is divided into very short chapters; The Shore, Briony and Ren’s story; The Deep, Ren and Sam’s story; and The Shallows, Sarah and friend Aria’s story, stranded on a sinister offshore Island. This layering of time and space enables the reader to understand the characters’ struggles with loneliness, hope, blame and grief. Hope can be worse than knowing, the unanswerable questions are still the same and the comfort of friends and family can be a lifeline from a very dark place.
The book is an exercise in “Coastal Gothic” with the two girls stranded on a sinister island but this was the least successful part of the book and ultimately I lost interest in what happened there. The characters of Ren and Briony made up for it, their gently blossoming relationship acknowledging their damaged personalities and need to find themselves a stable place in the world before moving forward. The ending was a disappointment, lacking resolution and it took me until halfway through the book to realise the significance of the chapter headings indicating which thread I was reading, but most of the writing was well worth the effort. A great discussion starter in senior classes or book clubs.

Themes: Grief, loss, depression, loneliness.

Sue Speck