A Different Kind of Daughter
Maria Toorpakai
Maria was born in a part of Pakistan where being a girl means that you must travel with a man at all times, and remain inside the rest of the time. Maria felt trapped, but luckily her parents were free-thinkers that knew how to support their daughter. After Maria burns her dresses, there is no turning back and she lives as a young man for a number of years before being outed on a squash court when pursuing her dream.
I could hardly put this novel down, which was surprising because its basically a memoir. I’ve never heard of her though, so it was all new to me. I did enjoy the ‘journey’ right from the beginning of her life.
I would go mad on ‘house arrest’. Maria was so brave, doing what she really wanted to do – but she also knew she would die if she didn’t play. I didn’t understand how destructive she could be, but I could understand how she felt she had no other options. All the same though, the kitchen seemed like a better place of practice than her bedroom!
Dengue! She catches Dengue virus! That’s my area of work, so I generally get super excited when it is mentioned. Here it is in a real world situation. Although it bring Maria to her knees, it doesn’t make any difference to her desire to play sport.
What wasn’t clear to me is whether Maria identifies as a woman or as a man, or something in between. With all the sports testing that is going on at the moment, I would expect this to be a problem. That’s not a complain about the book though. Just my particular interest in biology and genetics.
I really did enjoy this, and I’d recommend it to a wide range of readers – those who have doubts about Muslims being all part of the Taliban, or people who are interested in elite sport, or people who want to know about some every-day life in Pakistan.
Where can I start talking about this novel? It arrived, I spotted it, and next thing it was 2 hours later and I still couldn’t put it down. …yes I have problems with being attracted to new books. The pages grabbed me right from the beginning, pulled me in, and kept me reading because things could change at any moment. And of course, I love reading about the training of new and innovative skills.
As always, it can be dangerous reading a sequel of 
The blurb of the book suggests that “a letter. In Jenna’s handwriting. Along with a key.” is the most important driving force behind the novel. In fact though there is so much more to the story. The interactions of the characters and the flipping time periods do a much better job of exploring the story.
There are some interesting things going on in this novel. If you wait too long after reading something, you lose those things. It’s not that I’ve waited too long, its that I’ve read about 5 books in the mean time. Oops?
The twist in this novel is that you don’t know there is a twist. I’m really not sure how long Will’s situation has been the way it is, but you get the snap-shot of when things are really changing. Will is very skittish, but cute all the same. Julian is not cute. He’s just annoying and pushy and a great friend.
Most of us want to hope that we won’t fall for a Con. Who would get into a pyramid scheme? Hell, I was almost pulled into one as a kid, but it didn’t work in Australia because we don’t have $1 notes to post. The deal was that you post $1 to each person on the list, then you add your name to the bottom of the list. Then the more people you send it to, the more you make back. Now it costs a $1 to send the damn letter, so you wouldn’t even break even!
I’m not certain what kind of audience this book is aimed for. Maybe for a tween girl? Someone who just wants to dip into a book, be inspired, then come back out. It took me maybe 5 minutes to read it, and I wouldn’t see myself buying the book myself.
I feel like it is possible that this novel had too many themes crammed into it, but instead I felt like they all balanced themselves out. It read exactly like the protagonist was thinking and feeling. Ash struck me as so confused, and yet so cute. And don’t be put off by the ‘teacher crush’ thing. It’s not a big deal, its just used as a prop for forwarding Ash’s character development.
Ah, the ending. It tidied things up nicely. Perhaps too nicely. Worlds never end like that. So it could be unexpected, except the minute a couple of people do their ‘expose’ thing, then it becomes obvious what is happening around that, and it proves to be inevitable. It was already so unpredictable, in its own way it was predictable.