I received a review copy of this title from Peirene Press. For more information about the release of the book and the blog tour, please scroll down to the banner at the end of this post.
My Review:
breach is a series of eight short stories that all focus on the plight of the refugees in Calais and the ripple effect that their presence has on the lives of everyone with whom they come in contact. The refugees in these short stories are from different countries and have made their way to this camp in Calais which is referred to as The Jungle. It is a type of holding place, a purgatory, where they are caught between the horrors of their past lives and their hopes of finding a future in Britain.
The first thought I had as I was reading breach was that these poor, downtrodden refugees must have witnessed the worst kinds of conditions and horrors in their homelands to leave everything behind for the unknown. What would make someone leave home, cross an ocean, and risk death in order to find a new place to live? The cold, the damp, the small spaces in the tents were all vividly described in these stories. One young refugee comments that the camp in Calais is a jungle, but his home was pure hell.
The stories also highlight the volunteer workers and locals who are trying to help the refugees. The town, in general, does not want the camp there and the refugees are kept in their own, separate makeshift town by fences and the constant presence of police. The story, “The Terrier” poignantly illustrates the mistrust between refugees and locals. A woman who owns a Bed and Breakfast in Calais is asked by the town council to take in two refugees, a brother and sister. Since she has no customers and is in need of income, this local resident agrees to give the refugees room and board for a fee. The woman tries to have as little contact with the young man and woman as possible. She questions and distrusts everything they tell her. But as she interacts with them she gradually comes to have sympathy for their wretched situation. Although this brother and sister have a much more comfortable place to stay than most, they still return to The Jungle every day to see their friends. They are outsiders in Calais and sadly enough the only place they feel “at home” is in the camp.
It is brave and innovative for Peirene to have commissioned a series of books like breach that will bring understanding to the plight of refugees and shine a spotlight on other policial and social issues that have arisen around the world. At times this book was difficult to read because it brought the realities of human suffering to a level I did not fully understand. It was evident from reading this book that the authors spent quite a bit of time in Calais speaking to and interacting with the refugees, the relief workers and the local residents. It is my hope that breach will be widely read and will make us all more sensitive to the suffering of refugees. We can learn some important lessons from what is happening right now in Calais.
For more information of the book please visit the websites listed in the tour banner below:
“The Jungle is like a laboratory”
Annie Holmes was born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. Her short fiction has been published in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the US. She now lives in the UK. “This is the third continent I’m calling home. My life here in the UK is somewhat precarious (African passport) and somewhat privileged (education and ‘white’ skin). This is also the third continent where I’m witnessing migrants and refugees vilified.”
Olumide Popoola is a Nigerian German writer of long and short fiction. She lectures in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. “breach is my answer to the new wave of racism, views that are becoming acceptable again because of old ‘the boat is full’ narratives, because of the fear of the Other. These are stories of complex characters with dreams and fears, lives that started long before they found themselves in Calais.”
This is the latest release from Persephone Press whose classic fiction I adore. This book is unlike any other I have read from their catalog so far. The entire time I was reading it I felt as if I were in the midst of a dream with lots of sounds and imagines, some vivid and some out-of-focus. And the dialogue was sparse and poetic, sometimes difficult to understand. The main character, a girl named Eliza, is an aspiring poet from a very tender age so it is no wonder that the author chose such a lyrical style for her novel.
Iris Wilkinson (1906-39), who wrote as Robin Hyde, is one of New Zealand’s major writers. Brought up in Wellington (her father was English and her mother Australian), she was encouraged to write poetry. At 17 she began work as a newspaper journalist. Hospitalised after a serious knee injury, she later gave birth to two illegitimate children – the first died, but her son, Derek Challis b. 1930, was fostered (and would wrote her biography in 2004). Despite two breakdowns, she continued to work ferociously hard, notably during 1934-5 at Auckland Mental Hospital when she wrote half of her total output; here she began her autobiographical novel 
Gavin Lamb is a thirty-one year old virgin who still lives at home with his parents. It’s not that he can’t afford to move out because he has a very lucrative career as a hairdresser in London. But he doesn’t like change and moving out of his childhood home would be more change than he could possibly handle. His doting and old-fashioned mother would also have a very hard time letting go of her son.
This latest release from Persephone Books is a charming and entertaining look into the life of a middle-aged British couple that has been married for twenty-seven years. When the book begins Mary is being told by her second eldest daughter, Rosemary, that she is engaged to be married. Mary tries very hard to be stoic about this announcement even though she is upset because another one of her children is flying the coop. Mary married John at a very young age and she has been a devoted wife and mother for her entire adult life. The thought that of all three of her children no longer need her makes her sad and she feels lost.
The Book Binder's Daughter 