Description
OUR HOPELESS, HOPEFUL WORLD. A novel about the contours of friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma and love that explores the stories we suppress and the stories we speak - and the healing that comes when we voice the things we've kept quiet for so long.
George's life is loud. On the water, though, with everything hushed above and below, she is steady, silent. Then her estranged dad says he needs to talk, and George's past begins to wake up, looping around her ankles, trying to drag her under. Everything is a blaring, blazing mess. Could Calliope, the girl who has just cartwheeled into George's world and shot it through with brilliant, dazzling colour, be her calm among the chaos?
Review
Eighteen-year-old George has many huge issues but she prefers to keep things to herself, mostly because her alcoholic father did too many things that needed to be hidden when she was young.
With Dad now living a new life in America, George lives with her Mum and her new partner, Mel, who is a wonderful artist, and her Grandpa, who chases all of the women from the nursing home where her Mum works (with much success). George is enjoying a gap year,
working part-time at Mel’s studio helping teach kids art, and spending time with her friends Tess and Laz.
Laz is a climate activist who is sure that the planet is doomed, and Tess is her BFF who randomly decided to get pregnant to a backpacker, and is sure that she and George are going to raise the baby.
Then into George’s life waltzes the new girl Calliope, and her life is instantly changed. Is this true love? But what about everyone else who needs her, especially Tess? Can George finally live life for her own happiness? And should she do anything about her Dad - who only George knows doesn’t have long to live?
This is a beautifully written story with incredible characters each with their own gifts, flaws and idiosyncrasies, but it is George that we love and journey with as she realises what she needs to do to have her own life. With themes of toxic friendships, the damaging impact of alcoholism, climate action, relationships and finding your own place in the world, this is a wonderful novel that will best suit readers 15 and older.
