The Goodbye Year by Emily Gale

Title: The Goodbye Year

Author: Emily Gale

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Text Publishing

Published: 30^thAugust 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 304

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: It’s the start of 2020 and Harper is filled with anticipation about being in the final year of Riverlark Primary. She wants a leadership role, the comfort of her friendship group, and to fly under the radar of Riverlark’s mean-boy.

But one by one things go wrong. When Harper’s best friends are made school captains they are consumed by their roles, while her own role — library captain — is considered second-rate. Then something major throws life off course: her parents take overseas jobs as nurses in a war zone. Harper moves in with Lolly, a grandmother she barely knows — and her five pets, vast collection of old trinkets and very different expectations.

Just as Harper is getting used to Lolly, the pandemic arrives, and her goodbye year is nothing like she’d hoped it would be. Strange things are happening – she wakes in the night in odd places, fixates on an old army badge that seems to have a mind of its own, and on a visit to the school library during lockdown she’s convinced she’s seen a ghost.

Who is haunting her?

Can she get through the anxiety of the pandemic without her mum and dad? And will Harper find a way to be happy with her goodbye year?

The Goodbye Year explores all the trickiness and confusion of the end of primary school and a new stage of life that looms with all its uncertainties and possibilities.

~*~

When 2020 begins, Harper is ready for her best year ever. It’s her final year of primary school at Riverlark Primary School, and she is looking forward to having a good time with her mates and getting a leadership role. But when her best friends are made captains, they’re utterly consumed with their roles, involved with the other leaders – and everyone sees Harper’s library leadership as not that important. Then her parents are sent to Yemen to be nurses during the war. And then the COVID-19 pandemic hits. Harper watches as it devastates the world and slowly comes to Australia, resulting in lockdowns and restrictions throughout 2020. In between lockdowns, Harper is able to go to school but finds herself distanced from her friends each time, and seeks refuge in the library, where she discovers a ghost – William Park, and a cadet’s badge from over 100 years ago. As Harper struggles with the feelings of isolation, lockdowns, a ghost, the pandemic, and getting used to her grandmother, Lolly, she is determined that her final year in primary school will still be special – but can it be with her life, her friendships, and the world around her in turmoil?

Stories set around or referencing the pandemic were rare at first – not many people wanted to write about it – because it was too close, it was and still is happening and to some extent, not many wanted to read about it. In those early days we all just wanted to escape – so we read and watched older things that were distanced and untouched by the pandemic. To some extent, many of us, myself included, still do. Lately though, I have managed to read books that refer to the pandemic, or a pandemic, or like in the case of The Goodbye Year are set during the current COVID-19 pandemic. However, I have stuck to ones that don’t delve into the harshest side of things, where the entire story is consumed by the pandemic – that’s something I don’t think I could read. Yet in The Goodbye Year, I think we get a good balance – where we know what is happening, and we know what will happen. Emily has written it in a way that is realistic and relatable for readers aged about twelve and over – or ten and over even. I had always felt I wasn’t ready for a book like this until I read The Goodbye Year – Harper’s experience is not universal, but it did capture so much of the anxieties we all felt watching 2020 unfold. It showed one person’s pandemic experience, yet in doing so, echoed the sentiments that came with isolation and lockdowns for so many.

For me, I felt Harper’s anxiety because I had the same concerns about numbers and family. Like Harper, I had family overseas and even family interstate and a few postcodes away that I couldn’t see unless the rules were relaxed. In this sense, there was a universality to the story because this is something that would have affected most of us. And I loved that Emily acknowledges at the back that there will never be a singular pandemic story. I feel this too – there are so many that it is possible we cannot represent them all, but perhaps we can use certain stories to represent some of the universal feelings and anxieties. I think what was important about this one was that it allowed Harper to be worried – yet I think it also gave readers like me a way to deal with our feelings about the pandemic and reading about it in a safe and secure way. I liked that we didn’t see all the horrible stuff – it was referenced to give the setting. In seeing the pandemic through Harper’s eyes, we got to experience it differently to how a thriller set during the pandemic might have us experience it. It wasn’t intense, which helped me get through it – I didn’t feel on edge, but rather, wanted to see how Harper fared and if she solved the mystery of her ghost. There was more than the pandemic going on as well, which gave the book lots of feelings that all readers have felt at some stage, and this made it really special – being able to celebrate the small things like getting together (socially distanced of course), and seeing family, being able to connect in small ways with those around us, and the history of the community and school Harper is part of.

This was one of the best pandemic books I have read – it acknowledges everyone responds differently and I think this is the kind of pandemic-related book that so many people need right now. Well done, Emily!