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Cloudwish (2015)

Tekijä: Fiona Wood

JäseniäKirja-arvostelujaSuosituimmuussijaKeskimääräinen arvioMaininnat
885304,717 (3.96)1
"Vietnamese-Australian teenager Vân Uoc Phan, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, doesn't believe in magic until the day an absent-minded wish actually comes true and she attracts the attention of her longtime crush"--
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näyttää 5/5
Are you the kind of person who wishes on a falling star or when you blow on a dandelion gone to seed or as you blow out birthday candles? If you are, would you be shocked to have your wish come true? Would you believe it's a result of the magic of the wish or something more pragmatic? In Fiona Wood's charming YA novel, Cloudwish, the main character's wish comes true. Not only is this a novel of a little bit of "be careful what you wish for" and a touch of magic, but it's also a novel about life as a second generation Vietnamese-Australian, love, and coming to see, know, and value yourself.

Van Uoc is a scholarship student at a prestigious IB school. She is smart and talented but she is also incredibly aware of the difference between herself and the other, wealthy students at the school. Van Uoc is the child of Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in Australia as "boat people." They don't have a lot of money and live in government housing. She has to try to straddle life between being a regular Australian kid and being different because of her family's immigration history. She is her parents' main translator even though her Vietnamese is pretty poor and she tutors other kids in her situation after school on Fridays. She wants to be an artist rather than the doctor her parents want her to be. And problematically, she has a major crush on Billy Gardiner, the school golden boy. Billy can be arrogant and unthinking, a bit of a jerk really, but he is also sometimes sweet, he's incredibly good looking, and the captain of the rowing team. One day in English class, a visiting writer passes around a box of items as writing prompts. Van Uoc is left with the dregs of the box but eventually finds a small vial with a piece of paper in it. The paper tells her to make a wish. So she does, wishing that Billy will notice her. And he does. So is it a magic wish or is it Van Uoc? And really, does she even want the notoriety and angst that being with Billy is guaranteed to bring into her life, especially as a person who has tried to remain as unobtrusive as possible up until now?

Wood does a good job balancing Van Uoc's life at school and her life at home, showing the dichotomy she lives all the time and the way that it can isolate her from both communities to which she belongs. There is so much going on under the surface of the story here. The reader learns about the reality of immigration alongside Van Uoc since she's been mostly protected from her parents' story. She doesn't quite understood her mother's PTSD until her mother finally tells her the truth about the horror of their immigration story. Early in the book, in keeping with the idea of the creative writing class, Van Uoc writes some essays that tell the unvarnished truth of her experience and life but then selecting all and deleting them. It is an effective way to show the truth of her feelings since her actions don't always do so but Wood does stop peppering these essays in the text as the novel goes on. Van Uoc as a character is quite sympathetic and while she sometimes comes across as the perfect girl/daughter, she's still lovely to spend time with. The novel as a whole comes across as honest and hopeful while still presenting things as they really are. More than just a love story, this is a novel of identity. It doesn't shy away from class differences, the reality (and causes) of immigration, and of the expectations placed on second generation kids. Wood has written a novel that will make her YA audience relate and think both. ( )
  whitreidtan | Jan 13, 2020 |
This award-winning young adult novel is about Vân Ước Phan, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants living in Melbourne, Australia.

Vân Ước’s name means “cloudwish” and in many ways the story is all about wishing. For example, Vân Ước dearly wished to be an artist, but her parents expected her to become a medical doctor. And on a more immediate level (she was still 16), if she had a wish, it would be for 17-year-old "golden boy" Billy Gardiner to like her, or more than like her: to prefer her to all the other girls in the school; in fact, to all the other girls in the world. That is what she wished for in her creative writing class, when she extracted from the “fantasy-prompt box” a glass vial with the word “wish” in it.

But Vân Ước, who often tried to draw inspiration from her favorite fictional character, Jane Eyre, knew that “it was a truth universally acknowledged that [Billy Gardiner] only ever went out with girls like Pippa or Tiff or Ava.”

Vân Ước would never be one of those girls. She was only able to attend her fancy school on an academic scholarship, and lived “in the dumpbin category of scholarship/poor/smart/Asian.”

Even Vân Ước’s art was an expression of her self-image: she shot photographs of overlooked things because she wanted to show that the seemingly insignificant could warrant close attention, and the tiniest elements could be made monumental. It was for similar reasons that she loved Jane Eyre:

“She has no ostensible power, but she is powerful. She’s inconspicuous - modest and unprepossessing - but her presence is strong. She stands up to injustice. She has self-respect. She isn’t afraid to speak plainly about her feelings. She is so passionate, despite all the restrictions and confinement of her background. She’s generous. And she’s an artist.”

After Vân Ước made her wish in the creative writing class, suddenly Billy started noticing her - even following her around. Was it a prank? Was it the wish, and therefore not “real”? And on a more fundamental level, she even suspected the genuineness of her attraction for Billy in the first place: was she a victim of the Anglo-normative definition of appeal featured in every advertisement and fashion magazine?

Meanwhile, at home, she was dealing with the yearly bout of PTSD besetting her mother, corresponding with the date her parents left Vietnam as “boat people” before arriving in Australia in 1980. Her mother wouldn’t talk about why it was so traumatic. But there was hope: she was finally attending group therapy.

It meant a lot to Vân Ước, because her parents didn’t realize that the extent to which they wouldn’t speak about the past made them strangers to her. Moreover, their suffering formed the whole basis of their relationship to their daughter in another way; she felt as if it was all up to her to justify their sacrifices - to make whatever happened to them worthwhile: "How could she ever do enough, achieve enough? Be enough? To compensate for - what, exactly?”

Plus, she felt she couldn’t even feel happy, “because if you survived, then you were all right; no - lucky. What problems? You’re alive!”

She decided she might as well act as if Billy’s interest in her were genuine, even if it all might crash around her one day and break her heart. Billy was okay with all the restrictions put on her by her parents, and saw her whenever he could. He even read Jane Eyre for her, and used quotations in their conversations!

“'I’ve never heard you quote Jane Eyre before.'

They looked at each other.

'This feels . . . real,' he said.

'It can’t be, can it? You didn’t know I existed until a few weeks ago.'

'We’ve known each other forever, haven’t we?'”

This all makes Vân Ước happy, but unhappy too. She is convinced Billy only likes her because of the wish, and decides to track down the teacher, get the vial back, and “unwish” the wish. She then begins the process of mourning what she gave up, only to discover that maybe her life was more like Jane Eyre’s than she thought.

Evaluation: Fiona Wood is a must-read author for me. She packages teen angst into such a delightful bundle, you forget, for a while anyway, why you ever thought teenagers were not adorable. ( )
  nbmars | Nov 19, 2018 |
4.5 really. Really liked this book. It reminded of Looking for Alibrandi by Malina Marchetta (another great Australian coming of age book). The themes of identity, independence from parents, responsibility and expectations are handled well. Many topical subjects - particularly race / refugees - would make this an ideal book for secondary schools. Highly recommend for 13 ( )
  SashaM | Apr 20, 2016 |
A companion-novel/sequel to Fiona Wood's Wildlife, about a classmate of Lou and Sibylla's, Van Uoc Phan.

Van Uoc doesn't feel like she fits in at her fancy private school - she's stuck "in the dumpbin category of scholarship/poor/smart/Asian". So she's not sure what to do when the boy she has a crush on - the rich, popular, school rowing champion - Billy Gardiner suddenly starts paying attention to her.

Cloudwish is about dealing with family expectations, and the challenges of not fitting in. It's about privilege, and friendship, and finding your voice. It's in the Melina Marchetta / Jaclyn Moriarty / Randa Abdel-Fattah vein of Australian YA.
There are quite a lot of references - and even a few strong parallels - to Jane Eyre, Van Uoc's favourite book. And some of the writing is really lovely and evocative.

But - I expected to love Cloudwish more than I did. There's something a bit reserved about this third person narrative, compared with the compelling first person voices of Lou and Sibylla in Wildlife (or of Jane in Jane Eyre, but that's a less fair comparison).

Although, having said that - that reserve is quite appropriate. Because Van Uoc is reserved. At school, she is determined to blend in, to say as little as possible.
She's reserved with her parents, too. Her parents speak little English, while her Vietnamese is basic - and she has assimilated to Australian culture in a way they have not. So she can't confide in them about school, or her dreams of pursuing art rather than the medical career they want for her. And her parents won't speak to her about their experiences as refugees... It's a complicated relationship in which her parents try to protect Van Uoc and she tries to protect them.
Fortunately for Van Uoc, her best friend lives in the next flat.

I loved Van Uoc. The reserve didn't stop me from connecting with, and caring about, her.

This book just didn't have the same emotional intensity of Wildlife.

Still, recommended.

She was going to be arriving at Billy's party underdressed, too early, in a van that said Bao Mac's Happy Chickens with graphics of, yes, very happy-looking cartoon chickens painted on its sides [...] Before this moment of new hell, the van had only ever been a vague philosophical conundrum: how could the chickens be happy, given that they were dead and destined for the dinner table? Now, it had been transformed into a weapon of torture for her personal mortification. She was spending a night in reverse-Cinderella land. ( )
  Herenya | Mar 31, 2016 |
Cloudwish is a delightful new contemporary young adult novel from Fiona Wood, author of Six Impossible Things and Wildlife.

Asked to choose a prop for a creative writing assignment, Vân Uoc Phan selects a small glass vial. Inside, a slip of paper says wish. Vân Uoc considers the possibilities, she could wish not be the only ‘scholarship/poor/smart/Asian’ in her privileged private school, or that the government would stop persecuting asylum seekers, but Vân Uoc’s most private and fervent wish, is for Billy Gardiner to like her.

Readers familiar with Wildlife might recognise Vân Uoc and Billy for their role in the book as minor characters.
Vân Uoc is the only daughter of Vietnamese refugees, she lives in a housing commission flat, attending the prestigious Crowthorne Grammar on an academic scholarship. She is quiet and studious, her parents expect she will become a doctor or a lawyer, though Vân Uoc dreams of becoming an artist.
Billy Gardiner is Crowthorne Grammar’s golden boy, he is smart but takes very little seriously. One of the first eight on the successful school rowing team, the son of wealthy parents, he takes his privilege for granted in a way Vân Uoc never can.

When Billy suddenly takes notice of her, Vân Uoc assumes she is being set up for a joke but as his attention persists, she begins to wonder if a wish really can come true. The ensuing relationship between Vân Uoc and Billy is sweet and believable, deftly handled by the author within the context of the story.

But this is not just a story about a teen romance, throughout the story, Wood sensitively explores the experience of diversity in all its forms with a focus on socioeconomic, racial and cultural difference. Vân Uoc keenly feels the divide between herself and her classmates, she can’t afford designer jeans or even a cup of coffee after school, her free time is limited to spending Friday nights watching movies in her neighbours flat, and she has responsibilities they can’t imagine. Vân Uoc is also haunted by her parents experiences as refugees. Though she knows few of the details, her mother’s annual slide into depression suggests unimaginable horrors.

With references to Jane Eyre, Vân Uoc’s idol, and Pretty in Pink, Australian politics and the legitimacy of asylum seekers, mean girls, Chapel Street, and magic, Cloudwish is a wonderfully observed and heartfelt Australian story about identity, belonging, love, and dreams.

“Jane had all the answers. Of course she did. When had she ever let Vân Uoc down? It struck her like a proverbial bolt from the blue that within Jane Eyre’s framework of realism – of social commentary on class, on charity schools, on imperious rich relations, on gender equality and the restricted opportunity for women, on love and morality…there was also some mad magic.” ( )
  shelleyraec | Sep 22, 2015 |
näyttää 5/5
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"Vietnamese-Australian teenager Vân Uoc Phan, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, doesn't believe in magic until the day an absent-minded wish actually comes true and she attracts the attention of her longtime crush"--

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