Friday Never Leaving by Vikki Wakefield (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Friday Never Leaving by Vikki Wakefield Karen Coats Wakefield, Vikki Friday Never Leaving. Simon, 2013 322p Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-8652-2 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-8655-3 $10.99 R Gr. 7-10 Friday and her mother are always on the move, so Friday’s sense of self and home comes from her mother’s stories rather than a place. From those stories she knows she’s loved but that she’s also cursed: all of the Brown women are destined to drown on a Saturday. When her mother’s lungs fill up one Saturday and she loses her battle with cancer, Friday ends up living with a group of street kids, whose leader, Arden, possesses many of the qualities Friday admired in her mother and desperately misses. Arden’s methods of keeping the group together, however, soon make Friday uncomfortable, and she tries to convince Silence, a selectively mute boy whose loyalties have transferred from Arden to Friday, to come away with her. Arden can’t allow this threat, and the entire group is put in danger by her warped need to maintain power. Artfully written, this story ranges from a sensitive portrait of broken kids trying to survive on their own and create the family they need, to depictions of life in urban and outback Australia, to a breathtaking action/adventure with outcomes both heartbreaking and chilling. Friday emerges as a character who is vulnerable to the machinations of others because she doesn’t yet understand her own needs or power, and Wakefield surely but subtly charts how Friday escapes the thrall of Arden to embrace the legacy of her mother, who has taught her many practical things as well as how to survive by staying mobile and knowing your own stories. Lyrical prose traces her path from lonesome grief to empowering connectedness, and it’s clear that coming to terms with the story of her past will ultimately free her to write the story of her future. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois