This was a stunningly beautiful book that told an important story, and didn't shy away from the emotions behind it. In many ways the lyrical way that this book was written only heightened that, and this is a book that will wrap itself around you until you can't help but feel everything, and it's important that it is felt. However, on the other hand it is not the easiest prose style to get into, and as vital as it was to conveying this story, it was also the reason why I struggled to get into and continue with this book. Overall, I am glad that I continued though, because it is a fantastic story of family and home, and all the feelings that come with that.

This story is lyrical and absolutely heartbreaking, telling the story of Firuzeh and her brother Nour. Yu's control of language is super powerful, and her descriptions of the experiences of the immigrant families is just bringing out so many emotions. I appreciated the experimental writing style, but I do struggle a bit with the lack of quotation marks. It did make a little hard to follow dialogue. But overall, this was a beautifully told, thoughtful story.

3.5 stars, rounding up to four for the sheer force of the emotion in this story. It was beautiful and heartbreaking although not what I usually read. I will be very eagerly awaiting for the author's other works.
On Fragile Waves depicts a family of refugees trying to make their way to Australia, where they hope to start a new life. It is a book that starts hopeful but that hope soon gets crushed under the weight of the reality of the family's experience as they're tossed from one place to the other in a modern day Odyssey that does not seem to end, even when they reach their destination.

“Okay, so she was happy. Except for the loneliness. Who needs friends when you have all that?” “A safe country—can you imagine?”

Damn. That was one h*ll of a journey. Firuzeh. Nasima. Jawed. Khairullah. Nour. Holy damn i love these characters so so much it aches me.

This book was a rollercoaster of emotions. It took me through sadness, happiness, fear, indifference, anger and all that’s in between. The story follows the journey of an Afghan family leaving their homeland behind in the hopes of seeing peace, not having to fear for their lives every second they breathe and the author does such a great job in detailing the struggles they had to go through.

It deals with loss, and grief, and hope and what exactly entails in being a refugee; and one thing i found so well done was the response and attitude that Australian locals showed Firuzeh and her family. It included the hatred, inhumanness, the indifference, the kindness, and also the pity and sympathy that gets thrown at their situation. This paired up with the beautiful writing style, there were moments that had me in tears and gave me the chills.

The book focusses a lot on the family dynamic; the sibling fights and rivalry between Firuzeh and Nour, the very relatable overprotectiveness of the parents and the son-daughter discrimination and the author portrays this really well throughout the book and all in all i just enjoyed reading this book so much. I recommend this to all historical fiction readers and i hope people love this as much as i do😭.

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for granting me this ARC in exchange for an honest review. The book releases on February 2nd.

I initially picked up On Fragile Waves due to the publisher: Erewhon Books. Erewhon has been picking up interesting new voices, and is a major up and comer in the small press world. Recently, they released The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk, a novel I’m looking forward to digging into.

In On Fragile Waves, the fantastic elements are blended seamlessly into reality, creating a magical realist narrative steeped in cultural heritage. It follows a family of Afghani refugees attempting to make their way to Australia, where they hope to start a new life. Yu unflinchingly depicts the hardships refugees face both during the journey and while waiting for approval in refugee camps. Firuzeh finds herself haunted by those she lost along the way, and faces challenges that are foreign to those of us fortunate to have been born into stability.

While I had minor quibbles with the writing style and sometimes felt as though it was a little on the nose, this is an important story that rarely finds its way into mainstream media. Even rarer is to find a story that is so perfectly equipped to tug on your heartstrings and help you not only know the facts of life as a refugee, but also understand the emotional journey each and every seeker of shelter embarks upon.

Stories like E. Lily Yu’s wrenching novel, On Fragile Waves, help explain why home is so often a sacred concept. Home—as opposed to just a place to live—is where we feel safe. It’s where we feel comfortable and understood. It’s where things smell right and where our stuff is. Firuzeh has lost her home and, although she finds a place to live, is still seeking a place that can be a new one.

We meet Firuzeh and her family—mother, father, and annoying little brother—just as they’ve begun their flight from Kabul, sometime after the turn of the twenty-first century. We glean details about what’s going on the way that a young child does: piecemeal in things adults say to each other that they shouldn’t say in front of children. In between stories meant to distract their children, Firuzeh’s parents talk about their worries over documentation, how much money to give to possibly unscrupulous human smugglers, where they’re going to get their next meal. The family manages fairly well until the boat that they take from Indonesia to Australia is intercepted by Australian forces.

Most of the book takes place in Nauru and Australia. After a rapid flight from Afghanistan, via Pakistan and Indonesia, Firuzeh’s family is interned on Nauru—an island nation that is growing notorious for the conditions undocumented people have to live in before they are either allowed to immigrate to Australia or be deported. We see a small slice of that and this portion of On Fragile Waves is among the most depressing things I’ve ever read. Language barriers and bureaucratic red tape send Firuzeh’s parents into a tranquilizer-fueled despair. The parents lose their stories. They lose the will to do much more than lie in their bunks while the children learn to take care of themselves around the internment camp. Unfortunately for Firuzeh and her brother, the despair never really lifts. It follows them as the family is first denied and then accepted for immigration.

The faint sense of adventure Firuzeh felt at the beginning of On Fragile Waves has completely evaporated by the time the family is allowed to settle in Melbourne. She’s older, for one thing. She’s seen her parents crumble under terrible pressures. Then there’s the bullying she experiences from girls she meets in her new school. In spite of this, Firuzeh comes into her own by the end of the book. She might not have found a new home, but she’s managed to put down some foundations for one.

I’ve read a lot of fiction featuring immigrants in the last few years. (I’m really glad publishers are bringing out more of these. Our society needs to hear these stories.) But On Fragile Waves is the first time I’ve gotten the tale from a child. Yu manages to write from the changing perspective of a growing girl in a completely believable way, one that illustrates just how little control undocumented people (and even legal immigrants, to some extent) have over what happens to them. Firuzeh and her family are so often at the mercy of literal and metaphorical waves that threaten to pull them all under.

Although it took me a while to get used to writing style, by the end I really liked how the story was told by weaving the fairy tales in the dialogue and in the whole narrative. It's really moving how it shows the hard reality of the situation whilst gives the reader a glimpse of hope and joy in the saddest moments. It's not an easy story to read but it's really well crafted. I really liked the ending of the book.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and publisher for the ARC.

Firuzeh loves her life in Afghanistan. But her parents take her, and her brother Nour, and run to Australia, hoping to escape war and political turbulence.

What follows is an aching story told through lyrical prose, part immigration tale and family drama, part nontraditional haunting.

Firuzeh's journey is fraught with dangers and tragedies. Early on, she meets another girl who dies during the oceanic passage to Australia. She'll continue to see echoes and visions of that girl throughout the book. Her family finally makes it to Australia, after the horrible voyage and limbo in a refugee camp. But they find cold welcome, and life in Australia comes with heartbreak after heartbreak.

Firuzeh, who's basically still a child, doesn't totally understand everything that's happening around her — wars, and deaths, and arbitrary legal processes, and inexplicable cruelties — which makes the story, if anything, more harrowing. But her narration is threaded with the fantasies and stories that she picks up from others along the way — moments of hope and brightness and longing through the shared connection with another world.

This book is beautiful, and phenomenally researched, and absolutely gut-wrenching. Most of the other stories I've read about refugees recently have been memoirs, or works of nonfiction written by younger relatives about their parents' or grandparents' journeys and legacies. This book takes a more fictionalized approach, and it does a lot right with it. The shadow of the girl from the voyage who haunts Firuzeh, especially, feels poignant and emotional. The narrative never tries to explain her presence or its implications, which works quite well.

There's a bit of an odd moment where a journalist pops in. Her interviewees criticize her only wanting refugee stories that are sad, rather than looking for moments of humanity and connection across a broader spectrum. The interaction feels troublesome, and a bit unresolved; it leaves the reader wondering whether the book itself has done something similar. The author seems to have grappled with this concern in her fictionalization — and I suspect she attempts to answer that concern through the moments where characters share fantasy and bond through storytelling. These, and other small moments, try to move the novel toward hope and magic as much as despair.

I think as a reader, I felt the devastation more than I felt the moments of hopefulness, so your mileage may vary there. Still, in all, an excellent debut novel and an empathetic tale that doesn't want to provide easy answers.

In the opening pages of On Fragile Waves, by E. Lily Yu, young Firuzeh, her brother Naur, and their two parents are on the start of a long journey from war-torn Kabul to the hope of a better life in Australia. To pass the time on that first leg, Firuzeh’s mother entertains them with a fairy tale. But this will be no fairy tale, as the family makes its way through Pakistan to Indonesia to an immigration detention camp on Nauru Island and finally to Australia itself, facing loss and discrimination, poverty and indignity, and a long-standing instability and uncertainty that erodes their family ties. Filled with poetry, fairy tales, and flashes of magical realism in the form of a drowned girl who remains Firuzeh’s best friend, On Fragile Waves is a lyrical, moving, and at times heart-rending story.

The journey is fraught with tension from the very beginning, as a fellow traveler on a bus marvels at their naivety in trusting to “a name and a phone number” all the way to Australia, clearly implying they’ve been taken advantage of, though Firuzeh’s mother Abay fiercely defends their father: “My husband is no fool.” Time and again the reader is forced to face a gnawing fear that the family will never make it: disputes over supposedly-agreed to fees, worrisomely-long periods of time waiting for promised documents, promised boats, promised meetings, the ways in which the elements themselves seem to conspire against them. When they do, in fact, make it to Australia, it is not the land of hope they dreamed it to be. Instead it’s an isolated setting of tents, reeking public toilets, too little water, xenophobic guards and townspeople, and agonizing waits to hear if they will be accepted as immigrants or deported. Even that first acceptance means nothing, since it is built on a shifting mound of sand that threatens to evaporate at any moment beneath their feet, the threat of forced return to Afghanistan always looming.

Through it the family has to endure the usual immigrant/refugee problems: threats of violence, struggles with the language, finding work that is less than what you were at home, fitting into a new life, new country, new customs. Firuzeh, meanwhile, has to navigate the already troublesome water of middle school and all that comes with that hellish time period. Even as the family threatens to disintegrate, each of them finds ways at various times to endure, not all of them healthy. For Firuzeh, one way are her conversations with her drowned friend Nasima, a figment of her imagination one might think, save for how Nasima seems to leave the furniture wet when she departs.

The tension is sharply maintained throughout. Early in the story, after their too-small boat is swept along during a monsoon storm, Yu writes “Then the counting began. Names wavered in the air,” and you know the count will be short and all you are waiting for is who was lost. These losses, in various forms, pile up and threaten to grow almost unbearable.

Throughout, Yu’s dialog is spot on, the language shifts as needed from realistic to poetic, the characterization is always keen, and the children’s voices never feel anything but true to their age and experiences. The structure of the novel is equally rich, with the main plot thread interwoven with the fairy tales, some poetry, and the risky but successful choice to go beyond the family via several chapters that briefly dip into a side-character’s point-of-view, such as a young woman who tutors Firuzeh’s mother in English, a music teacher or a brutish guard who finds “a certain thrill and donning helmets and kneepads . . . watching detainees ‘faces transform from rage to fear.” Even in the little space they are given, these characters are fully realized, fully three-dimensional creations whose threads are seamlessly woven in to enhance the tapestry Yu is creating.

If I had any complaint in my reading, it was that I wished Yu had leaned a bit more fully into both the fairy tales and the magical realism. I was glad for their presence, but it felt somewhat timid, too tightly clamped down. But this was a minor issue at most.

On Fragile Waves is not a comforting tale, though it has its moments of kindness and even, if only for moments, happiness. It ends in both horror and hope, a grief for what has happened and, perhaps (only perhaps), a promise for what might come. Not an easy story then, but one well worth the reading.

Content Warning: On Fragile Waves contains violence (individual and systemic), abuse and racism

I'm excited by Erewhon Press, the new independent SFF publisher on the block whose offerings almost all seem tailor made to hit my "must read" list. One of the earliest stories I got excited for in their catalogue was On Fragile Waves, a intriguing looking tale of refugee migration from author E. Lily Yu. Originally slated for a 2020 release, On Fragile Waves was pushed back to early this year, and now this prettiest and bleakest of stories is finally coming into the world.

On Fragile Waves is a refugee story, centred around young girl Firuzeh Daizangi, along with her younger brother Nour, and her parents (generally referred to as Abay and Atay, but named Bahar and Omid), as they flee Afghanistan and attempt to reach Australia, falling foul of the country's inhumane policy towards refugees in the process, before finally trying to begin making a new life for themselves despite their still-uncertain status in Melbourne. Firuzeh's story is one impacted by both the deep traumas of her refugee experience, particularly during the boat trip from Indonesia and her family's subsequent stay in Nauru, and the more mundane challenges of being a loved but often overlooked, or overburdened daughter, with an irritating, spoiled younger brother and parents trying to adapt to challenges of their own.

The other defining aspect of Firuzeh's experience is the book's speculative element -although it's important to note that readers approaching On Fragile Waves solely because of its speculative content are likely to come away disappointed. During the family's journey to Australia, Firuzeh meets another girl, Nasima, whose is also fleeing the country with her parents. Self-important, status conscious, and confident about her new life, Nasima isn't a particularly pleasant friend to Firuzeh, but she nevertheless offers continuity and connection which is cut tragically short during the boat ride the two share from Indonesia. Afterwards, Firuzeh begins to see and confide in Nasima's ghost to make sense of developments in her own life, and even to begin to imagine (or exert?) some tenuous control over certain circumstances. The connection between the two girls, despite their brief friendship and diverging paths, underscores the fragility which forms the book's core (the clue is in the title). Everything that separates Firuzeh's life from Nasima's death is built on fragile foundations, and one moment of luck - and Firuzeh and her family have to build their lives within a system that never lets them forget it.

On Fragile Waves is mostly told from Firuzeh's perspective, in sparse but often beautiful prose, but it diverts often into different perspectives and voices, building up a picture of the people around them. These range from the small-minded racist guard whose chapter only serves to highlight the difference between his internal monologue about his actions and their external impacts on the refugees he holds power over, to the language tutor who volunteers with the family, to Nasima's older brothers, already in Australia and waiting for the rest of their family. Each of these chapters takes on a different tone and voice, and the effect is a novel whose prose is a fundamental part of its characters. There are also chapters where the narration becomes significantly more fragmented and poetic, including an opening which effectively summarises Firuzeh's first six years and introduces, in just a few lines, the interplay between threat and beauty in which the rest of the novel takes place, and later on, some of her dreams are told in the same style. One or two stylistic choices aside (the lack of quoted speech always takes a little while for me to get used to), On Fragile Waves isn't a demanding read where its prose style is concerned, but it is a book that encourages its reader to pay attention to style and language to get the most out of it. There's also a distinct separation between the first half of the book, which covers the family's journey from Afghanistan to Nauru and their time there, and the second half in Australia: it feels like because we see Melbourne through the eyes of an older Firuzeh, there's more direct representation of the interpersonal complexity, as well as a greater understanding of her parents' trauma and how it continues to affect them. In contrast, the family's time in Nauru contains more depictions of overt brutality and horror, but some experiences - like Firuzeh's brief befriending of a camp sex worker, and an attack perpetrated against her mother for being late for a bus - are beyond her capacity to process in the same way as the audience does, leaving us to piece together the broader dynamics from her incomplete perspective.

Yu - who is from the USA - has noted that over a decade of research went into In Fragile Waves, and there's even a chapter with a self-deprecating self-insert character (a US researcher who doesn't know any of the right questions to ask of the refugees she is interviewing, and has to be set on the right path by a more experienced Australian woman.) The question of authenticity is, on one level, hard to escape from - is Yu the right person to be writing this refugee story? Does this capture the reality of the experience? - but it's not a question that I, as a British person with no refugee experience, can begin to answer. What I can say about In Fragile Waves is that its empathy leaps off the page: an empathy that doesn't shy away from showing characters at their lowest, or darkest, or most destructive, but is always fundamentally generous about the circumstances and motivations that underpin those dark moments. I found it impossible not to feel for almost all of the characters (shitty racist camp guards obviously being among the exceptions), even when their motivations conflicted or it was obvious that one character's emotional response to a situation was notably shallower than the other parties involved. For instance, Grace Nguyen, the language teacher who volunteers with the Daizangis, laments the amount of food at that Bahar insists on her leaving with and considers her Vietnamese family's own refugee experience; we know from Firuzeh that the food Grace has left with will result in the Daizangi family themselves going hungry, in the name of maintaining a form of hospitality which doesn't even cross the cultural divide particularly well. Yu's choice of narrator, and the detached way the narrative plays out, seems to reflect that focus on seeking empathy rather than full understanding Firuzeh's childish reactions to her circumstances require a different sort of narration to what her mother or father's perspective might look like, and I think it was the right choice for the book to avoid making any specific judgement about her parents' motivations. This story isn't the right one to give them a direct voice, and I think that's OK.

In Fragile Waves is a hard book. Given the subject matter, there's no responsible way for it to be anything but a hard book. But it's also a book which ends, however tentatively, with a feeling of hope: that despite systems of oppression, people do survive, and things do get better, and there will always be people who care and try to do right by each other even when our experiences make it hard for us to understand. Despite that, I think it's an excellent read - one which I devoured in an afternoon and found myself deeply satisfied by. If this is where Erewhon is going with it's line, I'm more invested than ever before.

On Fragile Waves focuses on the immigrant crisis in Australia. The story is told from the perspective of Firuzeh. She and her brother, Nour left Afghanistan with their parents, Omid and Bahar, who are fondly known to the children as Atay and Abay. To comfort herself, Firuzeh narrates various fairytales to herself and spends nearly all her time daydreaming. Eventually, their worsening family life demands that she come out of her dreamland and focus on finding a way for herself in this new country.

This was not a beautiful story. It was a tale full of tragedy. But it certainly drew me in from the beginning and it didn't let me go until it was completely spent. The place which horrified me the most was the detention centre. The author described it so well that I felt just as depressed as Atay and Abay.

The writing style was not what I was used to and sometimes it frustrated me. That was my only issue within these pages. The character development was also a bit lacking and I was left frustrated when I got little snippets of information about the lives of secondary characters with no follow up.

My favorite character was Abay. She was a strong woman and she was right about not being able to make it if they were deported. Her strength would have been her downfall there.

This story was real. Real stories are horrifying but necessary. I heard stories about Nauru detention centre but this story illustrated it so well I felt as if I was within its walls.

I would definitely try other books by this author.

This book should be read by older teens and adults. There is some disturbing content such as suicides and drowning which would frighten younger readers.

Born into a family of storytellers and dreamers, Firuzeh and Nour. Born in Afghanistan, they follow their parents as they move from Pakistan to Indonesia to Nauru. Always hoping, always storytelling, the family finally settles in Australia. But their new homeland is not the welcoming place they hoped it would be. Neighbors, classmates, and the government make it challenging. Firuzeh’s fantasy dreams of the perfect life shatter and she is forced to find her way in the real world. It took me a while to figure out which family member was telling the story as I moved from chapter to chapter, but the pattern became clear for person’s voice. Once the reader understands the rhythm of the writing, On Fragile Wings is a strong, poetic story about the search for hope even when things around you are fracturing.

I should preface this review by saying that, in some aspects, my feelings about this book are essentially 'it's not you, it's me'. I'm not the biggest fan of experimental prose, and if I'd known that I might have thought twice about requesting an ARC that doesn't involve standard punctuation and sentence structure. I'm also a little confused about the decision to market this book as 'magical realism': while the genre should invoke a sense of fuzziness about whether something is "real" or supernatural, this book never really raised that question for me. The speculative elements were a very minor part of the story to the point it almost could have been told without them, and it felt clear to me that they were really just a manifestation of Firuzeh's imagination and a way for her to process her trauma and grief.

Having said that, this book tells an important story about the heartbreaking treatment of refugees in Australia, and the horrifying consequences of those decisions. It really emphasises the sheer impersonalness of the system: the endless waiting on paperwork, the seemingly arbitary nature of the decisions, the way Firuzeh's family are constantly required to defend their need for the basic human right of safefy. It doesn't shy away from the horrors that have occurred on Nauru. And it also nails the symbotic relationship between policy and community attitudes - Firuzeh's family experience racism every day in Australia from those who support Australia's tough stance on refugees, which then enables the policy to be continued with little opposition.

But the abstract style meant I never connected with the characters or their journey in the way I would have liked. I couldn't get a good read in Firuzeh as a person, how old she and her peers were meant to be (do ten year olds routinely wag school and use the 'c word' these days?) or what her dreams were for her better life. I also didn't really appreciate the random interludes to tell us the stories of some of the other side characters (such as Nasima's brothers, or Grace, the family's English tutor); the stories themselves had potential, but our glimpses of these characters' lives were too fleeting to really capture the true diversity of the refugee experience and distracted from Firuzeh's story.

I still recommend reading this book to get a better understanding of Australia's refugee policy and to prompt further discussions about the current approach, even if the storytelling itself didn't live up to my (admittedly lofty) expectations.

On Fragile Waves took me right back to 2015, to what has been referred to as "the migrant crisis". The daily news stories of strife and death upon the sea. The iconography of human suffering ever present in the media - the images that have forever burned into our retinas of dead children and grieving parents. The boats, always too small, too many people crammed into them, huddled together.
And, of course, the camps. 

This is a story that takes us on a journey from Afghanistan to Australia via the infamous detainment camp of Nauru. There are many news articles detailing how Nauru broke people in every way possible - broke their bodies, crushed their souls, smothered their hopes and dreams. I will quote Betelhem Tibebu, in a Vice article titled Life After 4 Years of Detention Hell on Nauru:

“It’s like heaven and hell. I don’t have any words to explain it. It was a beautiful place, but Nauru is a horrible place. For me, it’s a place where we lost our dreams, our health, our time and our identity. And we lost a lot of friends. I don’t think we were alive in that place, I don’t say we lived. I prefer to say we were dead.”

I have found it hard to write anything about this book. I think it is because of how deeply its story saddened me. Not that I did not already know about the horrible conditions that so many migrants live through in camps - I was well aware. But a story experienced chiefly through the eyes of a child, who doesn’t fully comprehend what is happening and why, becomes so much more impactful.
The choice to tell its story with a strong focus on the experiences of a child is one of this novel’s greatest strengths, in my eyes, but it does make for a more difficult read, emotionally. A child might, for example, not know the meaning of the phrase “survivor’s guilt”, but they may experience it nonetheless. They may suffer through extensive trauma and then, being utterly unprepared for it, have that trauma emerge in unpredictable ways. If the entire family is traumatized, and the adults are laid low by their burdens, to whom can the children turn for support? Will society be there to catch them when they fall?

This novel ultimately succeeds in turning an unflinching eye on the painful reality that being granted asylum or a temporary residence visa is not necessarily the end of a migrant’s troubles. A temporary visa can, after all, be revoked, the threat of being forced back home to a warzone ever present for those lucky enough to get out of the detainment camps. Furthermore, integration can of course be an issue - the learning curve for a new language can be steep, and cultural differences can make it hard to feel at home in a new country - especially for people suffering from trauma. It is not easy finding normality in a new life after - as the quote from Betelhem Tibebu describes - having lost so much of oneself… building a future with broken bricks, on a shattered foundation.

This story of one family’s fate, similar to so many others, is a powerful and painful call to arms against the inhumane treatment of refugees. Its poetic, beautiful language envelops the story in a dreamlike shroud and, in its beauty, defies the horrific subject matter. You will not feel good reading this book, but just as you should not turn away from the news just because they are upsetting, you should not ignore this important and impactful story for fear that it may be painful.

"Kabul was growing inexorably grave by building, stone by stone, swelling with the living and the dead". "I don't know where Australia is...but it's safe. The children will go to good schools. No one will attack me in the street or leave threatening letters, or insult you".

Firuzeh, six years old and Nour, four years old, were born in Kabul during rounds of mortar fire. Atay was hopeful that Australia was "a safe country...no bombs. no checkpoints. No soldiers". A seemingly trustworthy man, Abdullah Khan, had been paid to provide transport, passports and tickets. Atay, a master storyteller, weaves a tale to prepare the children for the trip to Australia. The tale was about Rustam, a brave Persian warrior. "Every steed buckled under his warrior weight..." until he found a beautiful colt named Rakhsh. "Rustam and Rakhsh would "go forth and defend the country. Rakhsh kept Rustam safe as your Atay and I will keep you safe," said Abay.

Abdullah Khan informed the family of four that they could not go directly to Australia. They could be caught and deported. Instead, they were brought to a compound in Peshawar and given their passports and tickets. Firuzeh, the novel's narrator, met Nasima and her family who also awaited transport. Despite being from different walks of life, the young girls become fast friends. Nasima asked Firuzeh to promise that wherever she goes, they will stay in touch, even if on opposite sides of Australia.

Onward to Jakarta, then picked up by a utility truck and brought to the sea. "[About] forty people loaded into a fishing sloop...the boat was riding low enough in the water that a rogue wave might have tipped them over...trapped by each other's legs and shoulders, prickly with splinters and salt flakes that stung". On the sixth day, the typhon came, the head count revealed a terrible tragedy, and the food supply dwindled. Abay reminded Firuzeh and Nour that "Rustam was hungry and thirsty, too...Heroes sometimes are".

Arriving in Nauru...a canvas tented detainee camp. Abay said, "Let's think of this as a vacation-like we are rich- on holiday...but Atay grew hoarse in his declarations of impeding departure". Firuzeh talked to her absent friend Nasima who she envisioned sitting on the edge of her bunk. "Nauru [was] the blackest of curses...rage and betrayal...promised freedom and the Australian dole, not tropical heat and tents and endless fences". The journey of hope descended into uncertainty, despair and despondency. Firuzeh, at times, would parent "her parents". Finally Australia! Australia would be "cruel, but a different kind of cruelty. Lonely. Harder that you could ever imagine...unwelcoming...calls of 'queue jumper' and difficulty finding employment due to visa status. This world was a harsh place.

"On Fragile Waves" by E. Lily Yu is a heartbreaking glimpse at families fleeing a country fractured by war. It is a brutally honest look at the despondency and despair of refugees and asylum seekers whose journey of hope might become one of fractured dreams. This new country did not seem welcoming. Many hurdles made daily life a monumental struggle. This novel is a chilling, eye-opening look at refugees in flux, trying to overcome traumatic life changing events while embracing an unfamiliar and unkind new cultural world. I highly recommend the heavy, haunting read.

Thank you Erewhon Books and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

On Fragile Waves is the debut novel of Astounding Award winner E Lily Yu, known previously for her short fiction work. It's a short novel that is based upon substantial research done by Yu on a real world topic: the plight of refugees fleeing war torn countries, in this case from the Middle East and Afghanistan to Australia. I've actually not read Yu's work previously, although I've seen it cited with high praise, so I was excited to get a prerelease copy of this one from the publisher.

And On Fragile Waves is a powerful book, devastatingly powerful, in its portrayal of the real world horrors that wait those fleeing as refugees on the risky journey to Australia, with its story mostly told from the perspective of a young girl fleeing with her parents and younger brother - from war zone to dangerous ship crossing to refugee camp to living in the country itself on foreign sufferance. It's a tough as hell book to read, with me having to put it down after nearly every chapter, and I wouldn't recommend trying to binge it, short as it is. But again, it's pretty damn powerful in how it portrays a real face of our world today and I highly recommend it for those in comfortable situations to understand what is actually happening out there.

Note: This is listed in some places as being fantasy or magical realism, although I'm not sure I can agree with that genre classification. That does not change its worthiness of being read or how powerfully devastating it is, just....don't expect anything clearly fantastical to occur.

TRIGGER WARNING: Self-Harm, Suicide, Harm to Children, and lots of Suffering. This book does not hold back from the experience it means to portray (for good reason) so be warned.


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Firuzeh was born to well meaning parents in war-torn Afghanistan. Her younger brother Nour was born 2 years later. She grew up a loved child, enjoying her parents' fantasy stories, always raising her hand at school (even if the teacher would always call on someone else for the answers). But her parents were afraid of what might happen if they stayed in the Country and so they saved their money for a plan: to run away to a smuggler in Peshawar, who has promised to smuggle them into Australia, where they know others have been able to make a new home, free of war. And so Firuzeh and her brother embark on a journey into the unknown.

On that harsh journey, Firuzeh meets another girl, Nasima, of similar age, who vows to stay with her forever....and so when Nasima does not survive the desperate journey over harsh sees, Firuzeh continues to see her ghostly image. And even when Firuzeh and her family make it to Australian waters they find not the welcome they expect, but the harsh refugee policy of the Australian government, who holds no warm hand out to those seeking shelter, but a welcome that will change Firuzeh and her family forever as they struggle to survive it.....
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On Fragile Waves is a story built out from its author's research and it is tremendously powerful and devastating, making each chapter land with a brutal punch. The book is mostly told from Firuzeh's point of view, even if she doesn't necessarily understand everything, with occasional asides to others who wind up in Firuzeh's orbit for a moment: from a family member who remained, to one of the prison guards at the refugee camp, who thinks of himself as doing good as he instead inflicts cruelty, to a tutor for refugees who comes from persecution herself, etc. etc. Firuzeh's chapters only beocme more and more tragic in their portrayal of the loss of innocence, and the other chapters don't pull any punches either.

And so we see Firuzeh and her family change as they survive the brutal boat ride to Australian waters, where they find themselves temporarily rescued from certain death only to wind up in a refugee camp where they treated as subhuman, bribed to accept deportation, or instead to wait for a seemingly-random chance at getting admitted on a temporary basis to the country. We see her have to act as her parents' translators once they get in, forced to be more than just a happy child, as her parents cannot handle the cruel realities they are forced into and don't manage to realize how those same harsh realities are affecting both of their children. We see other children and other families - on the trip, in the camp, and in Australia in refugee communities, and how they also suffer and try desperately to hang on to some form of life.

It's all done with tremendous craft, really bringing home the atrocity that is the whole situation, as you see from Firuzeh's eyes, which understand more and more as she grows older, the whole thing happen and the horrifying devastation it all wreaks on her whole family. The book contains only one minor misstep, a chapter in which the author quite clearly shows up (unnamed but still) for a second which is a bit disorienting, but other than that, its power and devastation never lets up, and readers will find themselves gasping for breath constantly, unwilling to go on, but knowing they need to know more, in hopes that there might be some happiness at the end. And it's not really a spoiler to say this, but there isn't, because this portrayal is based upon real people in this world and real experiences, real people who are currently not being permitted the opportunity for a happy ending, only more and different kinds of misery.

I'm kind of tearing up trying to write this review honestly, so yeah, this is a hell of a book that will make you tear up reading it if you have anything like a heart in your body. It may not be genre for real, but it is worth taking a break from genre to read, to confront reality and to drive you to do something to bring awareness to it all.

The writing in this book took some getting used to, at first it felt very dry and I was a bit thrown off by the unidentified dialogues (there are no quotation marks) and the brutal time jumps. The more I dived in though the more it felt true to the story as told by a child whose sometimes only getting understanding of what's happening.

We follow a family fleeing war in Afghanistan, trying to make it to Australia, narrated through the eyes of the young daughter Firuzeh. It is a work of fiction but it resonates really hard with the situation of a lot of refugees, making this a particularly heartbreaking read. After the sheer terror of the boat ride and the hopelessness of the detention camp, Australia seems like a promised land but the story doesn't shy away from the racism and discrimination that so often prevents refugees to build a new home where they feel accepted and safe.

A side note: this seems to be marketed as magical realism but it did not feel quite like it, the only "magical" elements in here could just be filed under "Firuzeh has an imaginary friend" for me.

Overall I really appreciated On Fragile Waves, it's a short read packing a roller-coaster of emotions and a bittersweet ending.

This book is a bit complex to review because as much as its characters may be fictional, the things that happen to them, the events that take place in its pages, are incredibly real. This book packs a punch, it is not long, but every single page of it is important. Every single page made me think about how lucky I am to have the life I have.
This book deals with a family that has to flee their home country (Afghanistan) and their arduous journey to Australia, where they hope to find a new home. It depicts the horrors of being a migrant, the difficulty and dangerousness of the trip but also what happens once you reach the place you struggled so much to get to.
There were many things in this book that were difficult to read, for me the hardest were the chapters in the detention camp, but like I said before, they are difficult to read because they are very real, and that makes it important for them to be read and known. I think, aside from the realness of this story, the thing that made my heart break the most was seeing the innocence leave Firuzeh and Nour little by little, hardship by hardship, but see them still fight, still hope. Because, after all, I think this book is also about that, about growing up and not believing in the stories of your childhood anymore but eventually realizing you need them to endure the injustices of life.
I really appreciated the chapters that changed perspectives, seeing how many people cared or at least thought of this family who seemed to be so alone against the world. E. Lily Yu's prose is enchanting and captivating (in some ways - the best ways- it reminded me of Helen Oyeyemi's), her characters are so real it made me think this was a true story. Firuzeh and Nour and Nasima and Abay and Atay and everyone else in this book are fictional but sadly there are many people in the world with stories too similar to theirs.
I think everyone should read this book, more so if you think it is easy being a migrant, or that the reason they come to your country is to steal your job or live off of your help. I think if you read this story and your heart doesn't break even the slightest bit for the real people behind it then that is because you don't have a heart and so it could never break.

I do want to add some trigger or content warnings for this book, as some very difficult topics are brought up: death, racism, self-harm, violence and abuse, there is also some mentions of blood.

TW: self-harm, suicide

I'm honestly finding it hard to write this review because I don't know how to put my feelings for it into words.

On Fragile Waves follows a family of four as they leave their home in Afghanistan behind in search of safety. Their journey takes them across treachorous waters, sent from one piece of land to another, unwanted, ignored, abused. They arrive on Nauru and wait as their fate is decided by people who don't know what they have suffered. Firuzeh and Nour watch as their parents give into despair and are helpless to stop it. And even when they do finally make it to Australia, their hardships are far from over.

The book is being marketed as magical realism but it honestly didn't feel that way to me. I'd say this is literary fiction with no SFF elements other than a child's imagination.

Everything about this book is exquisite. The writing is absolutely beautiful and I was swept away in the flow of the words from the very first page. The author chose not to use quotation marks for the dialogue for 90% of the book so it takes some getting used to at first, but I found that this only added to my enjoyment of it once I'd adapted.

The story deals with refugees so the themes are definitely heavy. I loved how it started off hopeful, with the parents telling stories to their children. It almost gave it a fairytale vibe. But the more you read, the more this hope drains away, as they are forced to suffer through uncertainty and mistreatment, all because they left their home, because they didn't feel safe there. Even though the part of the story set on Nauru is gruelling, the part that hit me the hardest was definitely the boat ride to get there. It reminded me of all the stories from not that long ago about Syrian refugees crossing the water in numbers too large for the boats they were using, of children drowning, and of how prosperous countries reacted to that: not with compassion, but with more restrictions to keep them out.

Regardless, the Afghani family does eventually reach their destination, but once they do, the world doesn't treat them any kinder. Firuzeh and her family are faced with discrimination time and time again, and it was honestly painful to read because it's so relatable. The author didn't try to make it look prettier than it actually is. Because of racism and xenophobia, refugees may not actual feel completely safe, even when living in countries that should protect them.

I strongly recommend reading this book. It's definitely one that will stay with me.

Review will be posted to Instagram as well, will add the link when it's up.

On Fragile Waves centers around Firuzeh Daizangi and her family as they flee Afghanistan for the promise of safety in Australia. The reader follows Firuzeh as she travels via refugee boat from her home in Kabul to detention centers and finally a new home in Australia. During her journey, Firuzeh encounters loss and suffering that leaves her with traumatic memories and immersive nightmares, all of which she copes with by reciting stories in her head or telling them to those around her. The hardships that elicited this coping mechanism don’t cease when she and her family arrive in the so-called promised land. Her parents must learn a new language, find jobs, pay bills, and worry about their family being deportation when their visas expire.

This is a unique, gorgeous book. It’s devastating and heart-wrenching yet retains an overwhelming sense of beauty throughout with its use of experimental phrases and its impassioned love for storytelling. How can a book have an impassioned love for storytelling if it’s a story itself? Yu makes it possible, as Firuzeh herself learns about the importance stories have in shaping both individual and cultural identities. Firuzeh’s parents tell her and her younger brother Nour folk stories from the minute they flee Afghanistan as a means of distracting and comforting them. When these stories no longer hold all the answers or ways of coping, Firuzeh adopts the mantle of storyteller, taking inspiration from these tales and trying to recast her life into oral vignettes that capture what she’s feeling. Even as she grows up and deems these old stories childish, they remain an integral lens through which she processes the world, her dreams haunting her with their prose-like intensity.

The entire novel passes in a dreamlike state. The passage of time isn’t always clear, and when shock and loss come, they are delivered in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of reality—quick, without warning, and leaving deep disorientation and unprocessed grief in their wake. Tragedy strikes suddenly so that the reader is left reeling from the unexpected events and expected to take it in stride just as the characters are forced to. That isn’t to say the characters are emotionally unresponsive—they have their own ways of processing and reacting to trauma, particularly through dreams and nightmares that haunt the narrative in both sleep and wakefulness. They keep marching forward and, while they don’t always consciously look back, the terror from their past is always psychologically in the periphery, burgeoning into the forefront in times of new emotional distress.

Firuzeh, her parents, and Nour all have their own distinct personalities, and seeing them interact not only reveals more about them as individuals, but also exposes certain dynamics as products of their cultural upbringing. We see family humor and sibling bickering alongside Firuzeh’s anger that her brother is given preferential treatment because of his gender and her frustration with upholding rules of hospitality when they are incompatible with her reality, such as giving food to guests when her family can’t afford to buy more. The characters were most well-developed with respect to nonverbal engagements, particularly how they handled grief. From Firuzeh’s mother to the protagonist herself, the characters processed trauma in specific ways. For example, Firuzeh processes loss with the use of storytelling to make sense of what has happened and try to figure out what to do next. Her mother, on the other hand, lapses into silence and gives up on communication, keeping her expression of grief private.

The most intriguing aspect of the book was its experimentation with form. Yu’s cognizant use (and disuse) of punctuation adds an entire undercurrent of meaning. Choosing to add punctuation in certain exchanges and leave them out elsewhere was such a deliberate choice full of unspoken purpose that left me agape with the ingenuity of its potential significance. One such stylistic choice was Yu’s use of quotation marks. In exchanges between Firuzeh and her family, quotation marks are entirely absent. Yet, whenever other characters appear in their own anecdotal chapters, such as the graduate student who helps teach the family English or the nun who connects the family to a community organization that supports immigrants, the exchanges amongst these side characters are always in quotation marks. To me, this elicited questions of voice and disenfranchisement, specifically who is allowed to speak and who is allowed to be heard. It suggested that Firuzeh’s love of storytelling was a way to restore her own voice, even though she continued to go unheard by others who dismissed her existence as an individual without agency. Meanwhile, those who Australian society immediately recognizes as social actors, like the university student, are allowed a voice that is acknowledged, which is implicitly suggested by the restoration of punctuation to demarcate their speech. Going off this informal language analysis, the turns of phrase in the novel were also refreshingly unique, and the discussion about nightmares as stories consuming other stories was mind-bending. The grammar nerd and analytical maniac in me were awash with awe. The form experimentation also contributes to the magical realist streak of the novel and its take on framing trauma as a deeply individual experience that often results in either looking outward for sources of comfort, like stories, or internalizing without acknowledging tragedy’s effect on personal well-being.

Overall, with its unique wording, intriguing form experimentation, and tempered narrative adulation of tales, On Fragile Waves will appeal to anyone looking for a novel about the power of storytelling as an outlet of expression and comfort that’s used to cope with hardships.