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Willow Tree and Olive Hodder
Headline: 260p
pbk $16.95
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After
reading the first few pages of Willow
Tree and Olive I was expecting a Looking
For Alibrandi-type book. There's the 17-year-old HSC student – who
attends a private school in Sydney, who loves and hates her
Mediterranean origins, and always feels slightly out of place – there
was even the blonde snob. But the story of Olive Alexandropoulos proved
to be quite different from that of Josie Alibrandi. The
narrative, for one – the book is ‘beautifully fragmented,’ the
story being made up of pieces of Olive’s poetry, her journal entries,
telephone conversations and even some accounts from other characters in
the story. At first this was confusing, but once I got into the style of
writing, I found it actually made the story a lot more interesting, and
the poetry conveyed emotion that ordinary narrative couldn’t have. The
plot, too, turned out to be quite distinct from Melina Marchetta’s
novel. Willow Tree and Olive,
in a nutshell, is about Olive, her downward spiral into repression and
how she climbs back up and learns to appreciate herself. When a horrible
memory from her childhood reappears, she is left feeling angry, dirty
and useless, and goes into therapy. Olive decides to return to her
homeland Greece and spend some time there to recuperate. Gradually, as
she visits the sites of her ancestors, her anger subsides and her wounds
begin to heal. This
is a beautiful story, giving impressions of love, joy, anger, sadness,
hope and friendship. It is best for 14+ readers of realistic fiction,
but should also appeal to those of different tastes. Hsu-Ann, age 14, ACT |
