The Pull of the Moon
by Pip Smith
UWA Publishing
Thirteen year-old Australian girl Coralie lives on Christmas Island with her father who manages a dive shop and diving tours, and her mother who works for Parks Australia.
You’d think that being stranded in the middle of the ocean would protect you from the outside world, but the world always found a way of getting in … with rats, snakes, yellow ants, and migratory crabs making it to the island to turn roads into looking like rivers of blood.
People in boats were also making their way to Christmas Island and the building of a detention centre to house them seems to bring a change to the island. This has meant that there aren’t as many tourists coming to the island and Coralie’s father’s dive business is suffering.
Her mother had been monitoring the declining native bat population and eventually leaves the island when it looks like she has been unable to save them. So it is just Coralie and her father when a fierce tropical storm brings a boat carrying eighty-nine asylum seekers, who have sailed from Indonesia, to the island.
When the boat overturns dangerously near to the cliffs, Coralie finds herself in the middle of a rescue operation with almost everyone else on the island.
Coralie locks eyes with, an eleven year-old Iranian boy, but she loses sight of him as he disappears beneath the waves. When Ali’s body isn’t recovered, Coralie decides to do everything she can to find him.
Author Pip Smith first visited the Christmas Island Immigration Centre as a volunteer ESL teacher. In subsequent visits, she spoke with locals about how the crash of the boat Janga against the island’s cliffs had continued to haunt those who lived on the island – including children who had witnessed babies and children floating face-down in the water.
This young adult novel is the starting ground for so many discussions about asylum seekers who risk their lives to come to Australia and the detention centres they find themselves in when they arrive. It also delves into the lasting legacy of grief.
Lezly Herbert
