Review: This is How We Change the Ending

Nate McKee is doing his best to be invisible. He’s worried about a lot of things – how his dad treats Nance and his twin half-brothers; the hydro crop in his bedroom; his reckless friend, Merrick.

Nate hangs out at the local youth centre and fills his notebooks with things he can’t say. When some of the pages are stolen, and his words turn up as graffiti on the centre, he realises he has allies. He might be able to make a difference, change his life, and claim his future. Or can he?

This is How We Change the Ending won the 2020 Children’s Book Council Awards Book of the Year for Older Readers, and was both long and shortlisted for a slew of awards, including The Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Literature. It’s easy to see why. Vikki Wakefield presents a raw and compassionate first-person narrative told by Nate McKee, a sixteen year old who has spent his whole life trying to survive. His survival hinges on the delicate balance of staying in the good graces of his abusive father, while also protecting his Dad’s partner, Nance, and his half-siblings. But, as his schooling approaches a point where teachers are encouraging students to plan for their future, Nate struggles to see how to carve a future beyond the day-to-day, when the odds are stacked up against him.

This is How We Change the Ending is hard-hitting, as it examines domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, and how the system fails to protect and uplift the most vulnerable. Nate McKee struggles to reconcile the daily compromises he makes to get through the day without incurring the wrath of his father, and the impact those compromises have on both the people he cares about and his own sense of self-worth. The novel explores the internal battle Nate has with himself, as he grapples with a sense of arrested development resulting from his absent mother, abusive father and low socioeconomic surroundings.

Vikki Wakefield has once again created a beautiful and compassionate story filled with fallible characters who are working against the odds to carve out a safe space for themselves. Nate’s friendship with Merrick is founded on proximity to where they each live, and where they are positioned on the school roll call. Nate recognises the goodness in his step-mother, Nance, who constantly has to choose between standing up to her abusive partner, or keeping the peace by biting her tongue when Dec behaves abusively towards Nate. Kicked out of his own bedroom by his father, Dec, who uses the room to grow a hydro crop, Nate’s refuge is at the local youth centre, which is under the threat of closure. As Nate comes of age, the fragile world around him threatens to collapse, forcing Nate to make an impossible choice.

This is How We Change the Ending is confronting, heart-breaking and resilient.  

Review: Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield

 

My life has been told to me through campfire tales—stories that spill over when the fire has burned low and silence must be filled. They’re like old coats hauled from the back of the cupboard. Dusted off, aired out, good as new. My mother, Vivienne, doled them out as a reward or consolation, depending on her mood. And so I came to know myself—through the telling and retelling.

 

Lilian ‘Friday’ Brown has been on the run for as long as she can remember. It started with her mother, who passed on stories about the Brown family curse – generations of Brown women fated to drown on a Saturday. After her mother falls victim to the curse, Friday finds herself trying to strike out on her own. Once again, she is on the run – from the curse, from the family demons that haunted her mother, from the grief that threatens to drown her, and from herself.

Dark, gritty, raw, unflinching. Vikki Wakefield has a talent for leading the reader through heavy-handed topics. She doesn’t shy away from the heavy experience, nor does she saturate her stories with glaring signposts for optimism-soaked fairy-tale endings. That is not to say her stories are without hope – for there is hope in Friday Brown, not in any singular event or story arc, but in the carefully-crafted protagonist. Friday Brown is a resilient survivor – not by choice, but by circumstance. Growing up in a nomadic lifestyle with her loving yet evasive mother has instilled Friday with a level of independence required to survive, but it has also left her wanting.

With her mother gone, Friday finds herself in search of a home, both physical and metaphorical. The unspoken animosity between her mother and her grandfather leaves Friday predestined to walk the same path as her mother – as she strikes out on her own in search of a place to belong, and people to belong with.

Friday develops an instant connection with the enigmatic Silence, a street kid who no one else seems to notice, leaving Friday to wonder whether he really exists. Perhaps also finding herself to feel invisible, and perhaps also desperate to fill the void left by her mother, Friday convinces Silence to take her with him. He leads her back to the squat, where she meets his family – a group of teens who have been drawn together after finding themselves facing their own hardships. Physically-intimidating and alluring all at once, Arden draws Friday in from the outset. Arden instantly establishes herself as the one in charge – instantly suggesting Friday should cut her hair, a seemingly offhanded comment layered with manipulative undertones. The push and pull tension Arden exudes leaves Friday in limbo, never really feeling like she is part of the family, but never really feeling like she can move on. And what is left to move on to? Does survival come at the cost of friends and family?

Friday Brown is an intense read that brutally and beautifully explores themes of friendship, family, grief, peer pressure and survival.