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loonybin65's review against another edition
4.0
True Rating – 4.5 stars
As I age, I find that I become more easily distracted while reading. The sound of a radio or TV in the background, or people talking, can frequently pull me away from the story. However, there is something about the way Liza Perrat writes that literally makes me forget about everything happening around me. Her characters are so well fleshed out that they become real people, whose lives and futures matter a great deal to me. I finished The Lost Blackbird last night, a story of two sisters bound by love and then tragically torn apart in a country far from their home, and find myself already missing Lucy and Charly, wanting to know where they go from here.
However, it’s not just the characters. The settings are so perfectly described that I could easily picture every detail of their life in Easthaven Home for Girls, their exciting journey by ship to Australia, and the climate, flora, and fauna of Australia itself, a country I have never visited myself. The story grabbed me from the first page, and if not for the annoying obligations of day to day life, I’m sure I would have read it in one sitting. Child migrants shipped from England to Australia to be adopted, or more often farmed out as basically slave labour, was a part of history I was not at all familiar with, and to learn something new while engrossed in a novel is the perfect combination in my mind.
The story of Lucy and Charly’s journey from a painful and traumatic past in England to a supposed dream life in Australia is made even more powerful by the paths that are chosen for them, each so very different from the other, that lead to shockingly different lives and situations that were sometimes so disturbing that I found myself very angry and upset to think that these things really did happen!! I often found myself asking why life can be so unfair to some through no fault of their own.
The Lost Blackbird caused me to ponder many things. How much trauma can one person take, and why some live through the trauma and come out stronger on the other side, while others reach a breaking point and just can’t go on. How the bond of familial love can withstand the most horrible of circumstances. How the action of one person, who has the best intentions towards another person, can negatively affect a third person. How outcomes for one person can change depending on the reactions/steps taken by others. And finally, is life all about fate, or exactly how much do the choices we make factor into the paths our lives take? What an incredibly thought-provoking read!!
The only thing that kept this from being a 5 star read for me was that there were a couple of parts near the end that I thought could have been a little bit stronger, but all in all this was a very powerful story that I highly recommend.
As I age, I find that I become more easily distracted while reading. The sound of a radio or TV in the background, or people talking, can frequently pull me away from the story. However, there is something about the way Liza Perrat writes that literally makes me forget about everything happening around me. Her characters are so well fleshed out that they become real people, whose lives and futures matter a great deal to me. I finished The Lost Blackbird last night, a story of two sisters bound by love and then tragically torn apart in a country far from their home, and find myself already missing Lucy and Charly, wanting to know where they go from here.
However, it’s not just the characters. The settings are so perfectly described that I could easily picture every detail of their life in Easthaven Home for Girls, their exciting journey by ship to Australia, and the climate, flora, and fauna of Australia itself, a country I have never visited myself. The story grabbed me from the first page, and if not for the annoying obligations of day to day life, I’m sure I would have read it in one sitting. Child migrants shipped from England to Australia to be adopted, or more often farmed out as basically slave labour, was a part of history I was not at all familiar with, and to learn something new while engrossed in a novel is the perfect combination in my mind.
The story of Lucy and Charly’s journey from a painful and traumatic past in England to a supposed dream life in Australia is made even more powerful by the paths that are chosen for them, each so very different from the other, that lead to shockingly different lives and situations that were sometimes so disturbing that I found myself very angry and upset to think that these things really did happen!! I often found myself asking why life can be so unfair to some through no fault of their own.
The Lost Blackbird caused me to ponder many things. How much trauma can one person take, and why some live through the trauma and come out stronger on the other side, while others reach a breaking point and just can’t go on. How the bond of familial love can withstand the most horrible of circumstances. How the action of one person, who has the best intentions towards another person, can negatively affect a third person. How outcomes for one person can change depending on the reactions/steps taken by others. And finally, is life all about fate, or exactly how much do the choices we make factor into the paths our lives take? What an incredibly thought-provoking read!!
The only thing that kept this from being a 5 star read for me was that there were a couple of parts near the end that I thought could have been a little bit stronger, but all in all this was a very powerful story that I highly recommend.
jo_kay's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
The Lost Blackbird is a story about two sisters shipped from a London orphanage to Australia, where they are promised a better life awaits them.
Separated upon arrival, despite having been promised that they would be able to stay together, they are both thrown in their own set of hardships. The older sister has endure harrowing circumstances of child labour on a faraway farm. The younger is adopted into a loving, well-off family, but her life comes with its own kind of trauma.
The story is told alternately from both girls’ perspectives, proving once more Liza Perrat’s masterful ability to convey children’s voices from a very young age into adulthood, enabling the reader to not only see but feel them grow up as well as witness the world and people around them in vivid, palpable detail.
Hence, The Lost Blackbird was a fast and utterly absorbing read that taught me something new, as I had no knowledge of child migration from the UK to the other parts of the former British empire (or perhaps I had forgotten about it.)
On the whole, this story sucked me up into its world and still didn’t quite let me go, and certainly left me with a good feeling.
This review was first posted on my book blog, Beyond Strange New Words