Title: Red Day
Author: Sandy Fussell
Genre: Historical, Contemporary
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 1st March 2020
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Price: $17.99
Synopsis: Heartfelt contemporary storytelling at its best, with vivid historical flashbacks
Set in a modern-day small town among the remnants of a Japanese POW camp, this is the story of Charlie.
Charlie has synaesthesia and hence sees and hears differently: people have auras; days of the week are coloured; numbers and letters have attitudes.
But when Charlie meets Japanese exchange student Kenichi, her senses intensify and she experiences flashbacks, nausea, and hears unfamiliar voices in her head pulling her back to the town’s violent past.
This is heartfelt contemporary storytelling at its best.
~*~
Charlie has synaesthesia, and is year seven at her local Cowra high school, and has lived alone with her mum for the past eight years, ever since the death of her older brother, Eli. Charlie sees and hears things differently – each day of the week is a different colour, and numbers and letters have attitudes. Everything can be a little more intense for Charlie, especially the big thing that has separated her family, and she longs for answers.
When Kenichi, a student from Japan comes to stay for a week,. Charlie finds her senses intensify, particularly around the Visitor Centre and Cowra memorial. She’s plagued by flashbacks to what happened in the camp in Cowra and the breakout, as well as nausea and hearing unfamiliar voices that are linked to the violent past of Cowra – but Kenichi has a reason for being there – a link that will help Charlie make sense of what she is experiencing. Together, they begin to look into the history of Cowra and its internment camp during the war, where many Japanese soldiers were imprisoned. It’s a history that hasn’t been explored much, but is very important as part of Australia’s history, World War Two history, and the role Australia had with prisoners of war.
This story is told through the eyes of two teenagers, both with family secrets and grief, and who both need a way to work through it, but aren’t sure how. I liked the uncertainty the characters displayed at first – thrown together by parental decisions that they disagree with. I felt that this realistically showed teenage reluctance as well as learning how to work together, and appreciating what makes us unique and difference – whether it is gender, race, neurological differences, and everything in between, showing that the diversity of the world is what makes it special. Allowing readers to learn about the Cowra breakout gives them a deeper insight into each other and a history that connects their countries.
Sandy Fussell does time travel a bit differently – whilst Charlie remains in the present, her mind and senses travel to the past, and the two collide dramatically, and lead to daring missions to reunite lost items and knowledge, and coming to an understanding of what it means to cope with loss when your family doesn’t talk about it, and you don’t know what really happened – especially as Kenichi explains the names they have may be fake – as the Japanese soldiers had wanted to protect their honour. It is the kind of book where you learn so much about history, neurodiversity, and the role that family connections and friends play in our lives through the fabulous characters Charlie, Kenichi, and Charlie’s best friend, Lucy – who accepts what they tell her without doubting and asking questions, without judgement. This means that this book is full of acceptance and the journey people take as they learn to accept and understand people, wherever they come from, and learning to speak out for what you want, and learning to express how you feel – and I felt that Charlie’s journey did this well. She needed Kenichi to open up, and become the person she wanted to be.
I loved the way history was threaded throughout this book, making it a perfect read for young adult readers to explore friendship, family, history, and understanding whilst touching on a tough subject and time in history. This is an exceptional young adult novel filled with educational moments and a rollicking good story.
The Book Muse 