Today is my turn on the blog tour for Crossing Over by Ann Morgan, coming out from Renard Press on 26th April.
This is a story of refuge and migration beginning with Edie, an elderly lady whose memory and hold on reality is beginning to slip as the present and the past meld together in her mind. The other narrator of the story is Jonah, a refugee who ends up hiding out in Edie's barn after a boat accident in his crossing to the UK. When Edie and Jonah meet, she is convinced that he is someone from her past, and he ends up falling into the role of her carer, as she struggles to maintain her independent life and he struggles to align the reality of the UK with what he thought was waiting for him, and the things that have happened to his family in his absence.
This story is working on so many levels - on one level as a story of two people figuring out their new realities, and adapting to being alone in different ways, and on another as a wider presentation of how people can become displaced for so many reasons. I don't remember the last time I read such a well imagined depiction of memory loss. I have experienced family members with dementia and alzheimers and Ann Morgan's portrayal of Edie is the first time I've read something that felt like it could be a true representation of how the thought processes actually happen. Sometimes painful reading, but incredibly well done.
Crossing Over brings together two very different people, with very different experiences, and aligns their stories so that we constantly see the ways in which they are similar. Parallels are drawn between the small boats taken by refugees in their search for a better life, and the evacuation of Dunkirk using civillian boats during World War 2, as well as other really interesting similarities. The point being that we are not so different from each other, no matter how much our cultures and situations may look like polar opposites.
I love a book which is fast paced, interesting and also makes me think about things I hadn't thought about before, and Crossing Over does all three. For me, good literature helps us understand other people better, and understand the world better too. It keeps us thinking and discussing and motivates us to make things better, and this book falls firmly into that category.
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