Rating: ***** 5 stars

Rachel Anderson,
Warlands.
Oxford University Press, 2000

Uncle Ho was a Vietnamese orphan before he was adopted by Amy’s grandparents. But nobody knows anything about his formative experiences in was torn Vietnam, nobody knows what provokes the violent screaming attacks. However, Granny says: ‘everybody needs to know the story of their life, even if it has to be invented.’ So, piecing together fragments of information, the family construct stories of ‘what might have been’ and cradle Ho with love, as best as they are able.

Warlands throws into sharp focus the psychological gulf between traumatised children and the well meaning but inadequate responses of those who try to help. Anderson’s multiple viewpoint novel about the plight of refugee children is technically accomplished and profoundly moving. This book makes an important contribution to topical debate about constructions of childhood and exhorts us to reflect on the damaging impact that promulgation of an Ideal Concept has when children cannot conform to expectations of the ideal image and are thus treated as non-children.

Nikki Gamble