Joan Mackenzie reviews Wavewalker by Suzanne Heywood

Hello I'm Joan and this book is called Wavewalker by Suzanne Heywood. When the author was seven years old her father came home one day and announced that the family were going to set sail in honour of the 200th anniversary of Captain Cook’s third voyage which they were going to replicate. It was going to be a three year trip and in 1976 they set sail from England and they eventually made it to South Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. Turned out though that it wasn’t three years it became an epic odyssey of ten years. And this isn’t so much the story about that voyage it’s the story of a young girl who’s effectively being held in captivity on a boat against her will by her parents when all she really wants is to get an education to go to school and to have some friends. And for all of this her parents held a bizarrely blatant disregard. They sailed and sailed through difficult often very dangerous circumstances. They eventually made it to New Zealand at one point where she and her brother were dispatched to Rotorua where they were put into a bach by their father and left to fend for themselves for several months while their parents went gallivanting off doing other stuff. These kids were stuck there with almost no money and with a visa which was imminently due to expire. Despite all the odds Suzanne did make her way to an education she passed the Oxford Entrance exams. She went to university. She’s had an extraordinary career ever since. But the heart of that young girl who desperately desperately wanted something else for all those years of her childhood rings true through this book and it is an extraordinary read. For anyone like me who loved the book Educated you will love this.

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He remembered what I remembered.