The Jungle

"I hate it there. I hate that they call it the Jungle." She pointed to the houses. "We lived like that once. We went to school, went shopping, watched films. We didn't ask to leave our lives. Why can't they see that? We're just like them. But we might as well be from another planet."

I am very impressed with this book. Very, very impressed. I've been thinking about it a lot since I finished and this little one packs a punch. It's such a great story of hope and friendship and family. I LOVED IT.

Oh, but before I forget, **Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own (obviously, and also, why do we even have to say that?)**

Plot:
Now, there are a lot of things missing from this story. You have to fill in a lot of things for yourself in order to make the story make sense. But anyways, we have our main character, fifteen year old Mico, who has lost all his family. He is alone and looking to move countries to find a fresh beginning. And there are these people called the "Ghost-Men," who will take you across the border from your country, into either France or England. But these men make you pay A FORTUNE, and little Mico thinks he can make it, and ends up paying them. ONLY to get caught by the police and sent into ... some special kind of camp for foreigners? IT was never specified what it was called (besides the Jungle) and that really bugged me, but whatever. And in this camp, he is rooming in a tent with three other teenage boys as well, and they practically become his family. Yet he still has hope of making it into a different country, and getting free of this camp that he's in. Then everything changes when he meets young Leila. Now, this isn't an insta-love story because Leila utterly despised everyone to be honest. And it takes a LONG time for them to become friends and to end up trusting each other. So together they are trying to make a way to get out of this camp and into the world beyond. And all of this is packed into a TINY book, and it flies by really fast, but it's a great read for such a short book!

My Issues:
There was so much lacking in this story. SO much description and backstories to characters. There wasn't a lot of information regarding the camp and the situation which really killed this from getting a five stars. At times, the writing was very poetic and I loved that, but then at times, the punctuation was TERRIBLE. I don't understand if some spots got completely overlooked, or if they just didn't care enough to edit them. But those things sadly killed the five star rating.

Quotes:
"He had been told to find a new life, a safer one. But nobody had warned him how hard that might be. Nobody had told him that in order to live, he'd have to give up everything he loved."

"We're all here now. Who cares why? It's where we want to go that's important."

"We're all afraid of being fenced in."

"I have wanted much, Mico. To change the past, to put everything back to what it was. But some things are not so easy to fix. Sometimes, it doesn't matter how badly you want. It's never enough."

There were some really on point quotes in this book. Like I said, I am overly impressed with this story and hopefully it gets bigger than what it is!

Mico and Leila develop a friendship against the backdrop of the Calais Jungle, a dangerous refugee camp in the north of France. They plan for freedom, struggle for survival, and hope for change.

So, I read this book in the evenings after working all day in a refugee camp in Greece. The camp I work in is not The Jungle, but I could connect a lot of the experiences and feelings of characters in this book to people I know here. This book really touches on a lot of ideas: social structure in the camp, money and stealing, the desire to work, hopes for freedom and the risks of getting there, and the relationship with the local community and law enforcement. In addition to all of that, the author beautifully approaches questions of home and memory:

“Children have short memories. By the time we leave, will he even remember his father? When he thinks of his home, will it be these tents he sees?”

My criticism of this book is subtle and definitely up to personal interpretation. Whereas the author depicts a lot of scary situations, the writing feels distant at times and not as gritty as the situations being described. This is a fine line to walk because it definitely makes the book more “accessible” to sensitive readers and thus can spread awareness about the refugee crisis. I could teach this in my classroom when I return to the US.

On the other hand, the grittiness is real life for so many people, and I wish the writing had been more visceral. There is an excellent (and terrifying and heartbreaking) scene early on in the novel where some men hope to jump off a bridge onto a train to England… the writing in that scene was fierce. I wish there had been more of that.

Every year I stumble across one book that leaves a deep impression, that moves me, and that stays with me for days, weeks, and sometimes even months. I already know that The Jungle will be that book for me in 2017. The Calais Jungle refugee camp, in which this story is set, was an actually existing camp that remained open until fall 2016. That fact adds a sense of realism to the story that might be responsible for the effect on the reader. This isn't just a made-up camp, a possibility. No, this book is representative of an experience millions of people have to go through at the moment.

To me, this book was perfect in every way. A compelling plot, lovable and relatable characters, and great pacing. Whenever I picked this book up, I couldn't put it down again until I really, REALLY had to. And that's amazing.

The author writes a stellar Deep POV that drew me in from the very first sentence. She has a beautiful, clean style but doesn't sacrifice prose whenever appropriate. I will most definitely keep an eye out for more of her books in the future, because if The Jungle is any indicator, her upcoming stories will be worth reading.

I'm a fan of stories that move me. But I'm also a fan of stories that feature characters who cannot be classified as either good or bad. And this novel offers just that. The story takes the reader on a journey they would not otherwise be able to take. It makes the reader question their own views and moral standards and leaves us with a striking question: how would having to flee war change us? What would we be willing to do to secure a future for us and our families?

The Jungle is a book about one of the most troubling issues affecting huge swathes of the World today, the movement of thousands of souls trying to escape poverty, despots or early death in the direct path of armed conflict.

What makes this book all the more important is that this is a book written for children and young Adults about Children. Set in The Jungle, the squalid camp in Calais where the refugees from many war torn regions congregated in the hope of reaching the United Kingdom, this is the story of a young boy as he waits for something, anything at all , to change to allow him to escape to England.

This is an unflinching examination of the duality of existence in a refugee camp, within spitting distance of the civilised lives of French neighbours and yet people are cramped in crude tents, fighting boredom, discrimination and each other to stay alive but fighting too to stay themselves, striving to be individuals in a crowd. A feat in itself for adults, you might think, but even harder for children.

Pooja Puri does a tremendous job in avoiding morality judgements or political bias, she just delivers a startling vignette in the lives of two children brought together in adversity, trying to be adults, dealing with brutality and deprivation years before their time, living on hope and bravado. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark... no one puts their children in a boat unless the the water is safer than the land" I remember reading this poem by Warsan Shire on the way to school, which found in the comments section of a Humans of New York post, if I remember correctly. Living in England through the Brexit vote and the rise of Trump, refugees are defining the politics of the world - this book is one to shake those wanting to "build a wall," not aggressively, just simply by being and by being so through the point of view of exactly those refugees.

In the Calais refugee camp aptly named "the Jungle," Puri introduces us to so many refugees with heartbreaking stories, but doesn't dwell on their pasts, but their role in the camp. Nevertheless, the main character is Mico, a young boy, and later on Leila, who I first labelled as the "love interest" but she is so!! Much more important than that.

Despite a lacking plot, this book is important because of the perspective it gives. There is no build-up, problem, and resolution because life in the Jungle doesn't wait for one problem to resolve itself before the next. Mico - and the reader - sees a friend successfully jump onto a train and then subsequently fall to his death mere seconds later, and then notices the repercussions of the outside world; more security around the train station. There is no problem and resolution here.

Another part of the plot is important but is something I won't mention, in order to keep this review spoiler-free (ok, asides from the top bit but that happens really early on so does it count?), and again is an ongoing project whilst other problems arise inside (and outside!) of the camp.

I kept turning the pages of this novel to learn more about the lives of Mico and Leila, not to find out the resolution of their problem, and perhaps more books should read like that.

//Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this in exchange for an honest review//

The beginning of this book didn't hook me right away. I opened it, read a few pages, and ultimately closed it in favor of a different book that sounded more interesting. BUT. When I came back to this book and read more than one page, I was pulled into this world of refugees and bad men who exploit their desperation, of a friendship that can easily get so broken when love comes into play, and a little girl who turned everyone's lives upside down in the camp.

An amazing debut YA novel! This author effectively captures the precarious life experiences refugees face every day. Her skillful character development kept me rooting for unrealistic miracles.