It’s the start of 2020 and Harper is filled with anticipation about being in the final year of Riverlark Primary. She wants a leadership role, the comfort of her friendship group, and to fly under the radar of Riverlark’s mean-boy.
But one by one things go wrong. When Harper’s best friends are made school captains they are consumed by their roles, while her own role – library captain – is considered second-rate. Her parents take overseas jobs as nurses in a war zone. Harper moves in with Lolly, a grandmother she barely knows.
Just as Harper is getting used to Lolly, the pandemic arrives, and her goodbye year is nothing like she’d hoped it would be. Strange things are happening: she wakes in the night in odd places, fixates on an old army badge that seems to have a mind of its own, and on a visit to the school library during lockdown she’s convinced she’s seen a ghost.
Who is haunting her? Can she get through the anxiety of the pandemic without her mum and dad? And will Harper find a way to be happy with her goodbye year?
Emily Gale is the author of middle grade and YA fiction including The Other Side of Summer and her collaboration with author Nova Weetman, Elsewhere Girls. Her latest novel for ages 10+, The Goodbye Year, explores all the trickiness and confusion of the end of primary school and a new stage of life that looms ahead. Reading this book took me right back to those feelings of being in year six as if it were yesterday.
The book begins in Melbourne in early 2020 which means one thing is looming – the pandemic and a lot of lockdown blues. These memories are sure to hit young readers, and plenty of adults, pretty hard. Gale tells Harper’s story with warmth, sincerity and a lot of emotion. She’s a relatable and tenacious protagonist with a lot on her plate! Not only is Harper navigating the end of primary school, it’s the first year of the pandemic, her parents are stuck overseas and she has to live with her quirky grandma. To add to this concoction, Harper starts seeing a ghost, who shares the experiences past students at her school endured, from WWI to the Spanish Flu.
What makes The Goodbye Year is a great coming-of-age tale that explores themes of resilience and friendship. Gale has really nailed that feeling of being on the cusp of growing up. We often say books are relatable, but in this case it’s so easy to empathise with Harper because most of us understand what she’s going through.
The Goodbye Year is an engaging, entertaining and relatable novel that I highly recommend to readers entering those big and exciting teenage years.
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