The only other things that keep Firuzeh company are the stories. The only girl Firuzeh can call a friend is Nasima, a girl who died early in the days of their flight and occasionally berates with a caustic tongue, but also keeps Firuzeh sane and alive with knowledge that only a ghost like her would know. Of watching her mother struggle to keep things normal and hide her own fear, to the point she overextends it on Firuzeh.

Being allowed into another country doesn’t mean they are welcomed.ĭespite it all, Firuzeh is also still a girl having to deal with the pains of growing up: of her parents showing preference to her younger brother, of feeling left out when other girls her age get to go to parties and put on makeup. And it doesn’t end when they are finally allowed into Australia’s mainland. The future becomes uncertain, and even mundane matters such as a simple shopping trip becomes drenched with horror as unspoken rules unknowingly broken have devastating consequences. Firuzeh witnesses her parents grow drained and fearful as they move further and further away from normalcy. Their journey is told in poetic prose, an achingly painful juxtaposition to the trials they endure as they are shuttled from place to place with little warning a harrowing ocean trip and then the mind-numbing waiting in a refugee camp in Nauru. But in November, I found myself craving poetry, and I was familiar with Yu through her short stories, particularly the gorgeous “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees.” When I saw the book cover of On Fragile Waves, I decided to give it a chance.Īs I expected, Yu’s debut book was beautiful and utterly devastating.įiruzeh, a young girl, is forced to flee with her parents and younger brother Nour from Afghanistan to Australia. 2020 was already filled with hardness and tragedy, and I wanted to escape to fiction that was easy, fun, and light. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.

On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu