This book feels like a classic, while still being fresh and absorbing.

The novel follows Elimina, a "Gutter child," starting after her adoptive mother's death results in her entering an academy that prepares Gutter children for lives of servitude in order to pay off their debts to society. As she grows up, she learns more about where the powers that be have placed her and her friends, faces many hardships, and discovers new concepts of home and family.

Richardson thoughtfully conveys characters that face systemic inequality through well-crafted prose, driving much of the narrative through dialogue. I appreciate that none of the horrors that take place are played for spectacle; instead the novel takes a quieter approach that emphasizes the ordinariness and pervasiveness of racism and colonialism, which allows for a deep examination of Elimina's inner life and leaves room for glimpses of community and hope.

If this novel isn't added to school reading lists, it will be a missed opportunity. It has so much to offer as a piece of speculative literature and as a critique of racism, colonialism, classism, and capitalism.

Gutter Child is a brilliant journey led by a brave young woman making her way through a system that was designed to oppress her. This story gives the reader a valuable opportunity to experience the growth of the characters while at the same time mirroring back the ways these same injustices are carried out in our own world today.

Before the Mainlanders arrived, the Sossi people existed on their own, a free and flourishing population living in harmony with the land. Once the Mainlanders overpowered the Sossi, they created the Gutter System, requiring the Sossi people to live separately, to be policed more stringently and to each pay back an individually assigned debt before they could expect be given any chance of freedom. Additional penalties were handed out seemingly arbitrarily and unpaid debts were passed down to future generations, offering little hope that a Sossi person could ever get out of the Gutter. Under the guise of helping them unlearn their ways, select Gutter children were permitted to enter the “academy track.”

Elimina arrives at the academy with a history that is different than that of the other students. As part of a social experiment, she was one of one hundred children taken from their Sossi parents and raised by Mainlanders. Having just suffered the sudden death of her adoptive mother, the teenager, alone in the world, discovers the truth of the system as she encounters it. After an unexpected turn, Elmina is moved from the academy to a smaller home that further exposes the truth of the Gutter system and her way through it.

Elimina's experiences are uncomfortable and sometimes distressing, but they are not without their sweet moments. She builds some wonderful and heartwarming relationships and learns to create a family of her own.

The book jacket indicates that this story is set in an imagined world, but it's impossible not to see the similarities between it and our own. The systemic racism and classism necessary to the existence of the Gutter does a valuable job in raising the reader's awareness to the ways in which our own society works for one group and against others.

Jael Richardson has written a gripping story of strength and perseverance in the face of disadvantage, but more meaningfully, she has created a world that can help us reflect on our own current state and how we can work toward correcting it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Canada for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC.

This was an engaging read, and I'm looking forward to recommending it to customers who are fans of dystopias, who care about systemic racism and injustice, and who enjoy reading Canadian authors.