Set in colonial Tasmania, this is a compelling story of two young girls lost in a forest, who are rescued by a pair of Tasmanian tigers, or more correctly named Thylacines. Hannah and Becky quickly adapt to life as wild creatures, discarding clothes, spoken language, and the ways of ‘civilized’ white Australians. Four years later, they are ‘rescued’ by Becky’s father, who people said ‘were so filled with dreams and thoughts of finding us that he became not so much a man as an idea of one dressed in human form’.
Louis Nowra draws on the traditional Australian trope of children lost in the bush, but has created a novel quite different to any other. Hannah’s voice is initially challenging, as she has never learnt to speak properly, but I quickly found it easy to understand and it had a lovely cadence to it. The novel has been chosen as a Year 7 English text at my school and I will be very interested in the students’ response to it.