Whisper

March 15, 2014
Struyk-Bonn's debut offers a darkly hopeful take on the universal themes of family and identity. Born with a cleft palate and exiled to the wilderness of an unnamed country for 15 years, Whisper has made a ragged family of her fellow outcasts, all of whom bear some disfigurement. Upon her mother's death, her abusive father comes to claim her for a slave. With nothing but a violin, a veil, and the memories of her mother and makeshift family, Whisper discovers that she has a rudimentary power over the society that scorns her. Class and gender questions arise: Is the omnipresent SWINC corporation responsible for a rise in genetic defects? Why do disfigured boys remain in their villages? She soon lives hand to mouth as a busker for Purgatory Palace, a ribald community of misfits where the threat of prostitution or capture is never far. Whisper's somewhat fairy-tale luck in finding benefactors--a fatherly music professor and a surgeon among them--is tempered by her literally brutal realization that she bridges two worlds and doesn't belong completely in either. Thus, her dilemma is agonizing: If the surgeon could cure Whisper and her family, would she agree? The author's vivid characterizations give this common trope urgency and nuance, and Whisper's answer resonates with hard-won conviction. A thoughtful dystopian drama. (Fiction. 13-18)

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April 1, 2014

Gr 8 Up-In a future dystopia, Whisper, the eponymous narrator, is born with a cleft palate. Like anyone with a physical or metal disability in this future civilization, she is abandoned by her parents at birth and raised in a forest camp under the guidance and protection of Nathanael, an "unblemished" man who shuns civilization for reasons of his own. Despite privations, Whisper and her fellow "rejects" thrive in their forest home and have formed a close, familial connection with one another. The other members of her "tribe" include a one-armed sculptor named Jeremia, a tiny girl with webbed fingers and toes named Eva, and a baby named Ranita who has a cleft palate just like Whisper herself. The teen quickly becomes baby Ranita's mother figure. Whisper's own mother visits only once per year, on Whisper's birthday. This year, she has forgone her annual visit and instead sends a gift: a violin. The instument proves life-changing for Whisper. Just beyond their enclave are hints of a devastating ecological peril, likely caused by the industrial practices of SWINC, a ubiquitous corporate entity. Although a direct link is not made, it seems clear that the rapid rise in birth defects can be laid at SWINC's door. This raises some fascinating moral and geopolitical issues for class discussion. An equally profound theme is the nature of family: What do we do when our family abandons us, when all of our assumptions about parental love are turned on their head? Whisper will enthrall, horrify, and anger young readers, but it should also give them a sense that they can create their own destinies.-Nina Sachs, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook, ME

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