Hilly’s grandmother Heidigran was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany in the past, and in the present, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, she is displaced from her own home to her daughter’s.

The story cleverly alternates between the points of view of Hilly, who like Jane Eyre regards herself as plain and proper but passionate, and of Heidigran, whose denial of her Jewishness and changing of her identity is gradually revealed, the reader being kept a step ahead of Hilly in the revelations. The narrative drive, strength of characterisation and texture of the writing partly, but not wholly, carry the weight of the themes: the systematic Nazi persecution and murder of Jews, the current Israeli – Palestinian conflict, English racism past and present; Alzheimer’s disease and caring for an elderly relative, a father’s affair, teenage love and sex… Sometimes the reader can feel, like Hilly, that ‘it was one problem too many’!

Alzheimer’s disease is depicted sensitively, but is also a convenient plot device to link past and present; and Hilly’s friend Reuben’s Palestinian boyfriend Saeed all but disappears from the story after the fallout from a racist attack he suffers. The problem that confronts Hilly and the reader is to fathom how to resist racism, when the historical parallelism may make it seem inevitable, and male youths taunt and assault arbitrarily. An answer to hatred is love, embracing another’s difference, and Newbery portrays wonderfully the growth of love and passion between Hilly, discovering her Jewish roots, and the Palestinian Rashid.

Shortlisted for the Carnegie medal, Sisterland explores racism in deeply thought-provoking ways.

2007-12-28