Bone Talk

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I loved that Gourlay used this book to try and bring more awareness to this period in history, as well as a stark reminder at the end about who provides us with our histories. The characters all felt two-dimensional and there was an absence of emotion which, if included, could have really enhanced Gourlay's unique perspective.

With the audience knowing exactly how the colonists will treat Samkad and his village, it feels very much like watching a terrible unseen through the gaps between your fingers. I wanted to imagine what it was like to meet your invader for the very first time – before he changed you forever.This novel creates intrigue to a forgotten war, one that is pushed aside by the big boys - WWI and WWII. Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippines, grew up under a dictatorship and met her husband during a revolution. It was a quick and easy read and it was very enjoyable learning about a new culture I had not really known anything about. After a harrowing Second World War which leaves Manila one of the citiesmost devastated by the bombing,the United States grants full independence to the Philippines. Candy Gourlay tells this brilliant adventure story from the point of view of a young Filipino boy from a time and place that most readers will know nothing about– and certainly from a previously unheard voice (most of what is written about the time is by Americans writing as tourists, anthropologists and conquerors).

Luki was one of the fiercest characters in this book, yet in the end, she never got what we all wanted her to be: a warrior!

This gripping novel imagines what living in a country on the brink of colonisation might have been like.

Emotionally, very affecting; I too felt the disorientation and deep urgency that Samkad describes when what is known is threatened by violence and upheaval. But Francesca had not been to the Philppines (for example, her early sketches had seagulls – there are no seagulls in the Philippines! Gourlay has built a compellingly believable world of a people in an evocatively depicted world – in this case, it looks to me like the Cordillera’s Igorot people – on the cusp of being drawn into the state as the colonising world arrives with gusto. A gripping adventure story and a fascinating piece of historical fiction but you never, ever forget that it's the story of Samkad, a boy you believe could be your friend.Instead the Mangili are the true threat but they are dispatched quickly at the end and then the story is nicely wrapped up in an Epilogue. However, customs dictate he must listen to the ancients of his village and he cannot become a man until his brother is found. As befits the genre, there are elements of uncertainty in the form and nature of the threat, uncertainty that slows the narrative in the third quarter of the book, but it quickly picks up to reach a two-pronged climax and unsettling denouement. I felt the inner voices telling him as he did things, even sometimes it felt like a move out of instinct. I left Facebook last Christmas and it has really helped me keep my writing at the centre of the day.