SO GOOD.....A piece of beautifully written literature! If you ever wanted to know more about Aboriginals of Australia, especially during the 60's when they were still treated like second class citizens, then this is a book for you.

The White Girl is a story of familial love between a strong Grandmother (Odette) and her granddaughter Sissy. Their relationship is precious and the heart of this story.

In some ways, it's a well known story. Odette is bringing up Sissy alone and dodging the welfare authorities who are likely to seize the girl. The story is simple, but the writing is so beautiful and delicate...it's a breathtaking story and one that leaves you with hope. The author's note at the end is particularly enlightening and important to the story.

If you love the stories against the odds, the Davids versus the Goliaths this is a novel for you #TheWhiteGirl #NetGalley #HarperVia

This book is one of my favorites, when I read the discription I knew I wanted to read this story, and I was right, it was very good.The Author did such a good job with each Character, I really felt like I was there, I will be looking for more by this Author. The story is about Odette Brown trying to protect her Granddaughter from a people and place that do not think much of the half black,half white people, called the, Aboriginal's, Its the 60s, they live in a area where the State tries to run the lives of these people, Odette has tried to live by these rules, but when her Daughter leaves and leaves Odette to raise her Daughter, Cecily (Sissy), she can no longer stay, for many reasons, one being, who she has just found to be the father of Sissy, a very wicked man, so even though she is no longer in good health, they leave town, hoping to find her Daughter. I thought the ending to this book was so good. This is a book of heartache and what a family is all about, This has to be a favorite for me this year. I received this book from NetGalley, and I am giving my honest review.

The cruelty of the government policies of "uplifting" indigenous aboriginal populations is made visible through Odette and her granddaughter, Sissy. Their journey in 1960's Australia form the centerpiece of this page turner, written with heart and grace by award winner Tony Birch.

It is no surprise to me that this is already a wildly successful book in Australia.

The White Girl follows the lives of Odette and Sissy as they navigate life in Australia in a post WW2 society that displaces Aboriginal people and "half-castes." I become enthralled in stories about different cultures that I'm unfamiliar with and Tony Birch did an incredible job in telling this story. I found myself horrified, saddened, and rooting for Sissy and Odette. Colonialism is always an unsettling story and it baffles be how similar the stories are for country to country.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Thank you NetGalley, Tony Birch, and HarperVia for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is my first time reading about the government in the 1960s taking Indigenous children from their families with the thought that they could fare better with white families and not their own. This story is about a grandmother, Odette, who is raising her granddaughter, Sissy, in a fictional town of Deane. The new sheriff in town is fit to shaping up the "abos" since the former sheriff just let things go with a blind eye over the years. This story is so much more than the history of the tragedies of Indigenous people in the 60s, but more so about the love between a grandmother and granddaughter. They are so resilient, hardworking and with the love and their bond, nothing can rip them apart.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an early read in exchange for my honest review.

In this novel set in Australia, an Aborigine woman seeks to protect her white-passing daughter from the white men of their small village. Ultimately, she takes the girl and runs to a larger city, where by chance she finds refugee with an Aborigine family. I wish this had been better: the subject matter is important and explores a part of Australia that many people don't know much about. But the characters are mostly flat, and the dialogue is too often unbelievable. There is an abrupt end to the main narrative, with many loose ends, and an awkward epilogue makes the book even more unsatisfying to the reader.

Thank you to the publisher HarperVia and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this wonderful novel.

'The White Girl' is a beautiful book about terrible times and centuries of cultural violence against the indigenous people of Australia. I'd recently bought and read Tara June Winch's 'The Yield' (which I now realize is also a HarperVia book) and was interested in reading more indigenous Australian fiction so was delighted to read the description of Tony Birch's 'The White Girl' on NetGalley and to have been approved for an ARC.

It's inevitable that many of the same themes and issues are touched upon in the two novels - many of the indigenous people have a shared experience with white Christian colonialism and subjugation - but they're set in different time periods and have a different narrative.

It's essentially a story of what someone will do out of pure love to protect someone from what's been, what is, and what could be. It's about those who would help, regardless of the risk to their own wellbeing - and in this story, those risks and outcomes were grave indeed - and those who participated willingly in the evil.

Tony Birch's writing is tight and clean and also very evocative. Sparsely cinematic. I could see, feel, and smell the scenes he described. I loved it.

Without giving anything away, I hope, this novel did not end in the way I expected it to. Not even close and that was a surprise and a relief. There was one element/character who remained unresolved, his storyline not tied up and I read that as an analogy for the racism and anti-indigenous sentiment and actions that remain unresolved in Australia.

This, as I said, is a beautiful book about a brutal time.

I would actually rate this book 3.5 stars for me. The title and the blurb really drew me in, but it took a long time for the premise of the story to become apparent. A story of an aboriginal grandmother and her granddaughter pushing through tides of bigotry, racism and oppression. I felt there could have been more tension between the characters to help the reader feel or at least understand the level of danger that was there and develop the story more.

I love reading internationally and Australia is usually good for a terrifying outback adventure, but this is something completely different…a story that takes the readers back in time and presents life in the country from an Aboriginal perspective.
That alone should tell you it isn’t going to be a conventionally happy story or an easy read. Since historical events are the same world-over for people who recognize patterns, the living conditions of the Aboriginal people of Australia should surprise no one, for they strongly echo those of The First People in Canada or Native Americans in the US. The white men came and imposed they rule, the local natives were brutally forced into submission, assimilation, etc. Deprived of basic rights. Made second class citizens, at best. It’s horrific, deplorable and (for the misanthropes, at least) all too accurately representative of the ways of the world.
In Australia in 1960/1961 when this novel takes place, The Aboriginal people were more or less at the mercy of the merciless state, subjugated, oppressed, and limited in many ways of life. This is a story of one such family, a grandmother, Odette, and her beloved twelve-year-old granddaughter, Sissy. Sissy’s mother never told anyone who Sissy’s father was, she had her daughter young and then took off. Whoever he was, he was obviously a white man, so the girl grew up blonde and with fair enough of a complexion to pass for a titular white girl. It is this crucial fact that allows Odette to make a desperate play for freedom from under the thumb of the fascist-like new local police officer and, pretending to be her grandchild’s nanny, take them both to the city, to try to find a happier fate.
This might be the first story I’ve read told from an Aboriginal perspective and it was as emotionally devastating, engaging and poignant as a story like that ought to be. Such a great character driven drama with such likable, strong, compelling characters. A quiet story in a way, but one that really draws you in and makes for an excellent read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

A heart wrenching and at times a beautifully written heart warming story.. I found it to be very readable and informative about the plight of the Aboriginal people in the 1960's Highly recommend this book.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ebook .

This is a coming of age novel, but possibly unlike any that you may have read in the past. It is set in Australia during a time when Aborigines were placed on reservations. This is was to allow the "white man" to oversee the needs of the Aboriginal people. Legally unable to travel without permission from local law enforcement, living on reservations where the children were separated from their families except one day a week and having no basic rights are things that I was unaware of. For me, the story itself is not the driving force of the novel, but I could not put the book down because of all the history. Thank you to NetGalley for the e-book ARC in exchange for an honest review. I give it 4 stars because the historical aspect of this book is outstanding.