Other Echoes

10-year-old Flora arrives in Borneo with her ex-pat parents, learning to adapt to a new culture. Seven years later, a bout of illness gives her a chance to reconsider events from that time only half-understood and half-forgotten, maturity giving her increased sympathy, distance a new perspective. Geras conveys well the difficulties of relating to 'a colonial community', and of being the new child - the need to fit in, the dares, the minor humiliations, and finally the triumph, the conquering of fear. My readers, expecting another Troy, were disappointed - 'nothing happens!' - and certainly the resolution of the drama is tame, if poignant; a bit close to real life in its lack of true built-up tension. The introspection is well handled but Geras' style has grown looser, more assured, since this was first published in 1982. The jolly cover also indicates a younger age group than I'd suggest.