Review

Teenagers are all too familiar with being strangers in their own bodies; change is never easy. It is even harder to cope when you feel alone and unwanted. The apt title — Dispossessed — plays on losing who you thought you were in a world you thought you knew all the while knowing you can never return to what was once familiar and safe.

Dispossessed is set against the backdrop of the lives of travelling circus performers, when the tents have been pulled down, the props packed away, and the make-up removed. A world where the illusions the audience sees are the reality the performers live. At the beginning of the American summer holidays, sixteen-year-old Slate is scoped out of foster care and taken to the home of his father, a home he has never heard about let alone visited on the other side of the planet in Aotearoa. Despite being welcomed by family he has never met; he is unwilling to accept his transformation into something wild and dangerous — how can you prepare for being something you have always been taught to fear?

Caught up in his own misery, Slate ignores the similar feelings experienced by his cousin Siren, pushing away her offer of friendship and solidarity. But before Slate has a chance of accepting his new life he is captured by hunters searching for the ultimate game. With authentic and flawed characters, this YA novel will engage even the most reluctant readers.