Pan's Whisper by Sue Lawson

For starters, I’d like to preface this review by saying that I don’t go out of my way to read realism. It’s not really my genre of choice, but every now and then I’ll read something that makes me think: If it’s all this good, I really should be reading more of this stuff!

Pan’s Whisper is the first book by Sue Lawson that I’ve read, even though she has written nearly 20. Once again, trust me to discover someone brilliant who has a huge backlist that now I feel compelled to add to my already overloaded reading pile. She is a Victorian who’s writing voice is convincingly Australian without coming close to being overbearingly so.

Back to the book at hand: Pan’s Whisper.

I’m sitting here, staring at the book, trying to think of what to write and all that’s going through my head is: Oooo I loved this book!

So, I will try to do better than that.

Pan (short for Pandora) is being put into a foster home. (I’m not spoiling anything here; it’s on the back of the book and on the first page…) The trouble is, she doesn’t want to be in foster care, which contributes to her being obnoxious and defiant. She has very particular memories of her childhood and can’t work out why she should be there. She feels betrayed by her sister and misses her mother, as difficult as her mother could be.

Enter Hunter, a boy who couldn’t possibly know what she’s going through. Could he?

The thing about this book that really made it work for me (other than the brilliant writing) was the format. We experience life with Pan, who has buried memories she doesn’t want to uncover. Early on, her foster mother suggests writing to her sister and supplies paper, envelopes and stamps so she can post them herself. The book then unfolds like this: Pan lives her life in foster care, attending a new school; she sees or experiences something that causes a fractured flashback; she then writes to her sister (letter format) describing the memory from the point of view of her younger self; then we are shown that same experience from Pan’s sister’s perspective which, bit by bit, reveals the lengths the she went to in order to protect Pan from what was actually happening. It is these memories from the sister’s perspective that become increasingly heart wrenching.

My goodness this book is fantastic! I’m getting shivers just writing about it!

If you like realism, then it’s for you. If you’re not so partial, then I suggest you give it a go anyhow. Each time I see the cover or hear ‘Pan’s Whisper’ I think: that book was GOOD! I’m sure you will too.

The Chapter Sampler is HERE