This book will break your heart with beautiful prose for terrible grief.

Using a foundation of folktales, a young girl named Firuzeh tells stories to herself as a form of self defense, a barrier, and a lens to view the nightmare of her life as a refugee. The phantom of her drowned friend haunts the stories she tells herself—even as she tries to stretch the comfortingly traditional tales she grew up with into fitting as an overlay to the life she is living now—and they are tinged with a deep sense of grief and confusion and loss

I am glad I read this book, but I think my heart wouldn’t withstand a second go at it.

I ask myself why I hesitate at five stars, and I answer with quibbles. Firuzeh was too witty for her age? But then she's great company to guide us through the book. An American writes about Manus Island and Nauru, Australia's detainment camps for refugees? But the novel goes meta about that, when an earnest American comes along to interview ex-detainees in Melbourne and asks the wrong questions. Somewhat more importantly, a descent into ugly, plain writing when the novel's one portrait of sheer evil walks in? How do you imaginatively grasp a concentration camp guard and not drop to blunt-instrument prose? Who knows? At one stage I thought the plot was going to not subject its children to the worst happenings in Australia's offshore detention, such as self-immolations, but they do witness self-harm.

I loved how it's written. Subtly lyrical -- not overblown -- and disjointed enough to be through the confused eyes of a child -- not enough to make the reader scrabble in its wake.

I've seen this novel described as magical realism even I think in the publisher's materials. I don't get that. Firuzeh has an imaginary friend, is most of it. The rest is suggestion, a mild element that might fall under childhood perception.

I loved Firuzeh and her dead friend from the boat, and believed in her mother and father, and wished she paid more attention to her younger brother, exactly as she gets told (what hint is that as to what she hasn't noticed, in the end?) It isn't direly negative: its end grabbed me by the throat with hope and beauty and that word that occurs in the text, joy. Hopepunk not grimdark, yeah.

I really am a fan of books that cover heavy concepts but do so in the most beautifully written way. I enjoyed the magical realism that was imbued in the horrors that the Firuzeh and her family (as well as the others that they meet along the way) go through. It doesn't lighten the tragedies or disrespect them in any way. So much of the story resonated with me. Heartbreaking, powerful, and beautiful.

on fragile waves is about displacement, the fragility of hope, and family, and friendships, and home, and the taking apart of our own stories. mythical and real stories. stories are just fragments of memory, rearranged to create dreams or nightmares. fairy tales are sometimes not fairy tales but real life. i absolutely loved the prose in this novel; it was gorgeously tragic and yet felt true to firuzeh's point of view. i found the lack of quotations marks very interesting, as it seemed to only be absent when firuzeh was in the scene, although sometimes it made it difficult to understand who was saying what and what was spoken out loud and what was just a thought. the poems in the first and last chapter were terrific, perfect way to begin and end a story like this.

you couldn't help but empathize with firuzeh, the horrors, and injustices that kept piling and piling over her and her family. i appreciated the two parts of the story, first the travels from Afghanistan to Nauru to Australia, and the second part, detailing the equally treacherous task of assimilation, of fear of deportation, and the tenuous strings that hold displaced families together. the journey of immigration doesn't stop when one reaches land, and traveling together doesn't necessarily signify the strengthening of a family's bonds. i think e. lily yu did a magnificent job exhibiting the effects of the stress and fears that come with displacement in the breakdown of firuzeh's family, from the relations between firuzeh and her parents, firuzeh and nour, and the relationship between abay and atay. the injustice firuzeh feels in the treatment between her and her brother, and some of the arguments that abay and atay had hit a littleeee too close to home; i was looking around like, shit am i hearing this conversation out loud because the memories be flooding back. i am not an immigrant, but i am a child of immigrants. the toppling of the fragile waves of family, the uneasiness of home in a place that doesn't feel like home, the quarrels that lead to the opening of every can of mistrust and accusations and anger, is portrayed so accurately. really, i felt like i was living my childhood over again and i couldn't tell if that was a good thing. good on the part of the author, bad for me.

the only qualm i had with this story is not really the story itself, but the fact that it is advertised as sci-fi/fantasy. because the fantastical elements are magical realism at most, and a child's reality at least. perhaps because it is written in the point of view of a child, we as readers are more inclined to believe that the "supernatural" elements are just apart of her imagination. either way, even if it was written in an adult's pov, i wouldn't categorize this as fantasy at all lmao, really it's only just magical realism. otherwise, this was an excellent story about stories, the stories that are fairy tales and the stories that are real lives.

Firuzeh and Nour grow up with the rich stories told by their parents. Especially Abay is a great storyteller. On their journey to Australia, their family faces many hardships and dangers. The stories provide temporary relief and show a resilience that comes from deep within the storyteller. Each person tells a different story, showing their unique personalities and strengths. 

When they reach the island before the coast of Australia, the seriousness of their challenges start to get to you. From a perspective of hope, you read how the parents and other adults drown in the hopelessness of the situation. Slowly the stories told by the adults start to fade and the kids find a way to take over as a way to hold onto who they are.

On Fragile Waves isn’t as haunted or magical as the synopsis suggests: I’d rather say it is more of a psychological novel than anything else. The journey part is told pretty quickly and feels rushed at times. Instead, E. Lily Yu chose to focus more on the story set in Australia. And that part is also my favorite part of the book. 

A tiny remark about something that I didn’t particularly like, but got used to: in the chapters that are told from Firuzeh’s perspective, no quotation marks are used when people are talking. This makes you read the story quicker, but also makes it less clear who is saying what. The comments somehow become one as if the whole family is expressing every single sentence together.

Even though On Fragile Waves starts a bit ‘childish’, befitting the age and relative innocence of the kids, it has a way of getting to you when the kids lose their innocence and have to fight for their dreams in Australia. They struggle to find a way that doesn’t forgo their urge to belong, while also facing the reality of their situation. The adults face challenges of their own in this new and unfamiliar world.

The stories that the family members tell change accordingly. Herein lies the strength of On Fragile Waves. If you zoom in on the topic and form of the stories that the family members tell, you can feel what their actions are sometimes hiding. The book has a slight Young Adult feel to it because of the young age of the narrators, but also because of the light tone and the easy sentences. It is a book that reads quickly until you reach the stories that are told in the last third of the book: here you will slow down of your own volition to give a place to the pain expressed in the often lighthearted stories.

4.5 stars
It took me a minute to get into the rhythm of the writing style. But, the writing style does fit the themes quite nicely.
It’s lyrical, fantastical, and breathtaking.
It’s a beautifully written heartbreaking story about a refugee family trying to find a better life for themselves.
They enter many tragedies during the journey and once they make it to this supposed better land.
It combines magical realism with literary fiction and the result is a captivating, yet harrowing tale.
And the cover- just gorgeous.
I already preordered myself a copy!

This is a devastating account of a family trying to make it from Indonesia to Australia, by boat, by plane, by truck--all on false passports and carrying the heavy weight of fear. Once the family--parents, a daughter, and a son--are confined to a camp for immigrants, where the full horrors of such places is exposed though the eyes and voices of children, who must watch their parents lose hope and voluntarily sedate themselves. Each victory seems to be dashed afterwards, leaving everyone uncertain and frightened. Poetic and compelling, Yu's novel is an important read for just about everyone living in our modern world, with its deportations and detainments and the separation of families.

This is a wonderful and compelling book that I look forward to recommending for my book club once we are able to resume our meetings. The story is a tragic one that could easily be overwhelming if not for the magical realism that is infused throughout. The topics of war, immigration, and discrimination can be tough to read about, but this book is so well written with powerful relationships. You won't want to put it down.

This ended up washing over me like a wave, and I ended up finishing most of this book in the tub tonight. The first part of this is the immigration story that the summary would lead you to expect - being smuggled across the world, the Nauru detention center, and the stories that Firuzeh is told as she experiences all this. But the second half of this is what really drew me in. Most stories would have ended at their visas to Australia being approved. The second half focuses on the family adapting to life in their new country, and Firuzeh starting to grow up, and the impact of Australia’s changing immigration policies, and the stories she tells herself and the ghosts that she carries. Woven throughout this are individual stories of those who interact with her family, if only briefly. And yes, duh, it’s political, and Australia’s immigration policies would give most Republicans a raging boner. Pick this up when it comes out in February, you’ll be in for a treat.

Poignant, compelling and beautifully written. I can’t say I enjoyed it as aside from it being quite a sad book, I wasn’t really in a head space to enjoy it this year (2020). But it poses important questions about sanctuary and home through the gaze of two refugees who turn to myths and fairy tales as a means of coping.

This book was absolutely heartbreaking. It has some of the most elegant prose that I have ever read and I loved the incorporation of storytelling as a means of helping these young children navigate through the various hardships that they face. This is not an easy read, but it is so worth it. Review to come on my blog.

On Fragile Waves is a book that will stick with me for a long time. The prose was beautifully written and I could not put this book down. It really tugs at your heart strings and I am so happy I got the chance to read and review this wonderful book!

I dare anyone who takes a hardline, zero-tolerance, separate-families-and-lock-children-in-cages stance on immigration and asylum seekers: read this book without becoming just a tad more empathetic.

I stayed up half the night reading this short but sweeping story of a girl and her family's journey from a war-ravaged home into the unknown, with only the receding hope of finding safety and stability to buoy them. The elements that push this into magical realism territory are naturally integrated and serve to strengthen the authentic tone of the refugee story. The author packs a wide range of experiences and viewpoints into the story, including a few chapters narrated by incidental characters that nicely supplement the main character's point of view to add context and insight.

This book definitely takes a lot of brain space to get through and truly understand and appreciate the threads of plot. I think that the writing was well done and the characters were well developed and this is definitely a worthwhile read.

On Fragile Waves is the most compelling book in recent memory. This book kept me up way past my bedtime on more than one occasion because I didn’t want to stop reading. But be warned, this book will break your heart many times over.

In On Fragile Waves, we are guided by young Firuzeh, as she flees a war-torn Afghanistan with her brother and parents. Their final goal is a new life in Australia, but their journey is by no means an easy one. Firuzeh’s parents tell the children fairy tales to distract from the horror of the journey, but there is only so much protection they can provide.

The family bounce from location to location, and as they struggle to stay together, others disappear, or are torn away. One particular tragedy sticks with Firuzeh in a supernatural way, proving a gorgeous sense of magical realism to the story.

On Fragile Waves is an absolutely harrowing story, but E. Lily Yu’s simple poetic language somehow conveys a constant sense of hope. I became emotionally invested in Firuzeh and her family very quickly, and longed for a happy ending. I was consistently frustrated by the unnecessarily complex bureaucracy of immigration, and the inhumanity of it all. There are a lot of cold-hearted characters in this book, who appear only briefly, but leave a big impression.

On Fragile Waves was nine years in the making, and the work, heart, and research absolutely shines through. Not a word is wasted, and the story always feels authentic. While some situations are brutal, they are, unfortunately, completely believable.

As soon as I finished reading this book, I wanted to start it all over again. I was not ready to leave Firuzeh’s world. I just wanted her to be okay. I have not been moved by a book like this in a long time. On Fragile Waves is an incredible achievement, and an astounding debut novel.

Okay, I honestly don't remember requesting this book on Netgalley and may have done so accidentally, so it was a surprise when it got accepted. Fortunately, it turned into a pleasant surprise, so, thank you to Netgalley!

This is not the type of book I usually tend to read, but it was still a very enjoyable read. It seems to be a very honest book on the topic of refugees and immigration and it was interesting to see it told from the POV of a child. It was inteesting to see the relationship between the family members and how they started forming friendships along their journey. And the relationship between Firuzeh and Nour was absolutely wonderful to read, it showed an honest sibling relationship and it was very heartwarming several times.
I did find it quite tense most of the time, but with the topic, that seems a fitting writing style.

The only thing that was somewhat disappointing is that I see this book tagged under magical realism and fantasy, but IMO it's a bit bleak on that account and *spoiler ahead* aside from the bit of ghost haunting, there wasn't much of it.

The prose in this book is stunning, it's like reading poetry. I feel like this story is about finding hope even when all hope is lost. There were times that I just didn't believe anything positive would ever happen again. All I can say is read on. Lyrical and beautiful, a unique take on fantasy.

On Fragile Waves is a dense read. The characters are well developed and interesting, but don't expect to get through this book without devoting some time and some deep focus. The story line was somewhat difficult to follow, and many passages required intense reflection and concentration in order to be understood.

After receiving a copy of this book, and being assigned by my editor, I am reviewing this book on behalf of Booklist.