Hetty lives at
Raxter’s School for Girls, a boarding school on an island, now in quarantine
since the Tox ravaged through it eighteen months earlier.
More like a jail than
a school, food is strictly rationed, their movements restricted and they have
no contact with the outside world, even their families.
Teachers count the
girls each morning to check whether somebody died during the night. The school
is barricaded by a large fence to keep the enraged, diseased animals out.
The Tox has
killed off many of the girls and left all affected. Power deftly builds a world
that is infused with a sense of decay, where privations are the norm, where
every decision can mean survival or perish. However, the girls are all silently
unravelling.
Hetty has only one eye and others have developed scales and her
friend Byatt has a second spine. All live with the fear of the Tox flaring up
again and perhaps finishing them off.
When reading, I wondered whether the
girls were about to transform, maybe develop superpowers, but no, their powers
are already within them, they are fighters, undefeated.
When Hetty is
given the privilege to meet the boat that delivers supplies to the island, she
becomes aware that the adults are concealing something from the girls – but
cannot determine their motives. Then Byatt is removed to the hospital and Hetty
is not able to visit – again, she catches an adult lying and this time she is
determined to uncover the secret. Because her best friend’s life depends on it.
Power’s story
telling is stark and unflinching, and she has developed a heroine who is every
bit as uncompromising as Katniss from The
Hunger Games.
The novel ended
with a hint that Hetty’s story is not over and I await the sequel.
Title: Wilder
Girls
Author: Rory
Power
Publisher: Macmillan’s
Children’s Books, $16.99
Publication
Date: 9 July 2019
Format:
Paperback
ISBN: 9781529021288
For ages: 14+
