I was really excited for the concept of One Hundred Days, but was a bit disappointed as the "One Hundred Days" celebration doesn't really have a huge role in the story. I think that it was an interesting exploration in generational trauma, and motherhood/the complexity in familial relationships and generational gaps, but struggled a bit with the writing style.

This is a story set in Australia and is told from 16 year old Karuna's perspective through a notebook that she's keeping to talk to her unborn baby.

Karuna and her mother are Asian living in Australia. Her overprotective mother with what Karuna would consider old-fashioned ways of living and thinking is very over-protective.

During the summer, Karuna becomes pregnant after having a fling with a 19 year old Summer school teacher. Karuna is so innocent, she doesn't understand until she's at least 3 months pregnant that she is, in fact, pregnant. Her mother instinctively knows. Although initially outraged, her mother accepts the pregnancy and will take care of Karuna and the baby.

However, her version of taking care of Karuna is to sometimes lock her in the apartment so she isn't running around.

I didnt feel the 100 days was a prominent part of the book, as the title might infer. Instead, I enjoyed reading the innocence of Karuna, how she began to manage her mother as she became a mother herself. How they eventually come to terms with each other as Karuna grows up fast.

I loved the writing in this book. I will definitely be seeking out more from Alice Pung.

Alice Pung’s One Hundred Days is a literary fiction standout. This is exactly the kind of novel I love - one which takes a simple concept and explores all of the complexities surrounding it in beautifully poignant writing. One Hundred Days’ plot revolves around a teenage pregnancy, but this is unlike any story you’ve heard before.

Karuna only knows life as the biracial daughter of a Chinese mother who grew up in the Philippines and married Karuna’s Australian father essentially as a mail order bride. Karuna’s mother, who she refers to as Mar, is strict, overbearing, and full of nonsensical superstitions. She prized Karuna as a child for her light skin tone and beautiful features, but as Karuna has grown, changed, and gotten a mind of her own, she feels her mother’s affection waning.

After Karuna’s father leaves the family once Karuna is a teen, and mother and daughter end up in Melbourne public housing, Karuna attempts to find ways to entertain herself while her mother works two jobs to support them. This is how Karuna ends up pregnant at sixteen, and this is where our story gets interesting. Fearful of the world and her daughter who she “just can’t control,” Karuna’s mother locks her in their apartment day and night as she awaits the arrival of her baby. Lonely and feeling like she has no control over her own life, Karuna begins writing to her unborn child.

These letters make up the novel One Hundred Days. Written in second person from Karuna to her baby, Karuna tells the baby about their family’s history, and what life was like for her growing up. She reveals how oppressed she feels locked inside the apartment with no voice of her own, and records the truth about the mind games and lies her mother weaves around Karuna’s pregnancy.

One Hundred Days plays homage to the intimate, intricate relationships that exist between mothers and daughters, and examines family bonds and curses across generations. It shows how we try to right the wrongs of our own upbringings, but also demonstrates how difficult it can be to alleviate ourselves from the very stuff that makes us who we are.

I especially loved One Hundred Days’ cultural references and relationships, which really make this book feel incredibly authentic. This novel feels like something real, something substantial, and my hat goes off to Alice Pung for crafting a story with such voice and raw emotion. Recommended to anyone who loves a good coming of age novel.

The story is set in Melbourne, Australia in the 1980s.

Karuna (Chinese-Filipino-Australian), is fifteen-years-old.
She becomes pregnant. Her mother (an overly protective mother/immigrant from China) decides to lock Karuna up in their house (inside their fourteenth story public housing flat) for a hundred days….
The idea was to keep Karuna safe until the baby was born.
The balance and strife between love and control between Mother & Daughter is at the heart of this story.
The question of who will have ownership of the baby is a real issue.

Karuna’s father had left years ago— divorcing his wife.
The feelings Karuna has for her father are complicated. There is fairytale idolization mixed with dark realties.

But now Karuna is pregnant….stuck with her mom’s control — (and love)
Karuna begins to write notes to her unborn baby in a journal. She writes in English, because it’s not a language her mother reads or speaks.

Mother and daughter argue over television shows, clothes, makeup, hair styles, vitamins, food, milk — everything!
We feel Karuna’s frustration and loneliness—and understand her edgy-irritable disposition.
Plus - add those real hormones of firing up.

Karuna thought she understood her mother - (from the old country) - but she flipped back and forth between feeling sorry for her mother and being angry.
“Your father ruined everything for me. I left my country and family for him and his fake photo, and he left me alone in a foreign land to raise a child by myself! This was her side of the story - her life had had momentum, responsibility; it had been leading somewhere, and then, suddenly, it was over. ‘When you get married, choose carefully. Don’t do it just to escape your parents’”.
“She thought she knew everything that her suffering had given her some sort of wisdom, when all it had done was make her bitter. As if I would choose marriage as an escape. That was just swapping one owner for another”.

There are many wonderful scenes— and sharp dialogue scenarios.

This was my first book I’ve read by Alice Pung. Her writing is lovely — the complexities are explored with warmth and humor.
It was heartbreaking to see how easily family members hurt one another.
Alice Pung captured the struggles between mother, daughter. family, community, cultured and generational differences with a compassionate tender understanding that it’s not easy growing up — forgiving — and finding one’s own voice.

I look forward to picking up other books written by this wonderful Aussie author!