I think Gracehopper is a lovely title for this book. Grace was born during an earthquake in Taiwan and her kiwi mother is rescued by the New Zealand authorities and brings her home. The mother has some serious issues and is reluctant to discuss the past. Grace, with obvious Asian parentage, hops around her, wanting to know her own history but reluctant to send her mother over the edge (again). She breathes. Jeet Kun Do is her stability. Energy in. Hold. Spread the peace. Energy in. Hold. Spread the peace. It is a graceful martial art.
This is a love story. Well, it is many love stories and none of them is straight-forward. I’ll start with the love of Grace’s mother, Katherine, for her daughter, which was born out of trauma and sometimes feels fraught with so much weight it is lost under the rubble. There is a grandmother called Claire, and you wonder if the love in the family has skipped a generation altogether, the sympathy between her and Grace holding things together that otherwise would come unstuck. Neighbour Anoop is a rock, a sort of loving grandfather figure. Grace has feelings for her childhood friend, Charlie, and I cheered as these developed slowly, carefully, respectfully. Charlie’s family have a good old-fashioned solid kind of family love that acts as a kind of lighthouse in a turbulent sea. This is where you want to go. This is what love looks like.
We first meet Charlie when he is pranking. The book opens on Christmas Eve, at the railway station, when he jumps out of a suitcase and surprises Grace, who hasn’t seen her friend for years, since they were at school together. Back then, the bullies called Charlie a ‘hobbit’, to which he explained he had achondroplasia, while Grace, with her unknown Taiwanese father, is called a ‘ching-chong’. Such bullying underlies how these kids see their differences perceived and drives their need to get beyond this shit. Charlie and his family have been overseas for years before his reappearance in the suitcase, and Grace is disappointed that his attempt to educate people away from their prejudices is so unsubtle. The pair reconnect and as Grace determines to find the truth of her heritage, she also helps Charlie finds a more dignified way to explore his place in the world.
I loved Charlie. I loved the care he took with Grace, and how he helped her come to understand and forgive her traumatised mother. The way Charlie’s family embraced Grace with such loving generosity perhaps indicates where his kindness comes from. And Grace, in turn, intelligently and emotionally, provides care for Charlie.
This is a pretty bleak story at times and it is not easy reading. There are any number of issues to think through: mental health, drug use, cancer, loss, suicide, racism, disability, PTSD, ‘found families’. But you have to trust Mandy Hager. She is a writer who knows where she is going with this material and she is, as always, spot on with an older YA audience. She never shies from exploring the difficulties of life but there is always hope. You just have to carry the hope through all the stuff life can possibly throw at you until it is realised and, slowly, things start to get better. Because they do.
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