✨BOOK REVIEW✨

📚My Father the Whale - Gina Perry📚

A compelling exploration of family, identity, love, loss, and the intricate relationships that define us. The vulnerability existing within the pages of this book, especially in the character of Ruby, blew me away. It is a novel that explores complex emotions, dives deep into the psychology of its characters, and challenges readers to contemplate their own connections to others, and to themselves.

Perry’s writing is so evocative, beautifully heartfelt and tender in its approach to some quite heavy topics. Sometimes everything is not as it seems, and sometimes our family aren’t who we think they should be.

What you can expect:
🐳 Complex familial relationships
🐳 Coming of age story
🐳 Themes of identity and belonging
🐳 Tender prose

A coming of age story about truly finding yourself, one that will stay with me for quite some time.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much to @netgalley @gina_perry_writer and @harpercollinsaustralia for sending me this to review 🙏🏻

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I had delayed reading this novel after seeing some negative reviews. Howveer, once I started reading I found I could not put it down. The storyline had me guessing what the backstory of the protagonists and her father was and if he was actually even really her father and the dynamics of the story made my great reading. Very enjoyable!

I easily lost myself in this book it's so unbelievably imaginative and vivid. A coming of age story about finding yourself, love, friendship and family, loss and grief, growth and hope. I loved the characters and everything about this book. I really hope this author writes more because I will definitely be reading it as she clearly is talented.

I was initially reticent to start My Father the Whale by Gina Perry because I'd just read another book (Tell Me What I Am by Una Mannion) about a young girl being raised by her father amidst secrets about her mother's fate and I was concerned the two books would become intertwined in my little head. As it happens however, they are (ultimately) quite different though similarly themed around family and relationships. Perry's book is also set in two distinct timeframes: 1984 and then 2000.

I enjoy books with child narrators - if done well - and Perry does a good job with Ruby who's nine years old when we meet her. But old beyond her years. Her father Mitch wears sarongs and harem pants has a long plait and rails against the oppressive system. I suspect he would have been out of place in 1984 which (in many ways) was a time of excess - billionaire hoteliers, yacht races, big hair and power suits with shoulder pads.

Ruby and Mitch are performers and constantly on the move and I felt somewhat nostalgic as they're in Queensland in the early part of the book and there are references to places I know, including my childhood hometown's 'Agricultural Show'.

Indeed, I was quite happy in 1984* so found the shift to 2000 jarring. I had a lot of questions as the second part opened as Perry references characters and events without initially explaining who they are. We eventually loop back to get updated on intervening years but the transition didn't quite work as well as I would have liked. I missed the 'coming of age' bit I guess. Once we're up to date however, things returned to a more familiar pace. I think perhaps I struggled with the stark difference from 9 year old Ruby to 25 year old Ruby. The leap from innocence to knowing. And possibly Perry is aiming to jolt readers, and remind us how much of who we are is shaped by those around us. Certainly the dichotomy between the hippy father who rode a unicycle and the Mitch who reappears in Ruby's life is meant to shock and potentially anger Ruby (and we readers) given that he wasn't able to get his life together when she needed him. 

Transition aside, I enjoyed this understated novel and Perry manages to resist the temptation to overplay the family drama and revelation of past secrets that we know is coming.