Review: Funeral Songs for Dying Girls

 

Disclaimer: I won a copy via a Librarything giveaway.

               This is a quiet book.  Not a bad book, but despite the description, the book is really about processing grief and loss.

               Winifred has a few problems.  Her mother died in bringing Winifred into the world, she is on the spectrum in some way, she is the weird girl in school, her relationship with her best friend has become strained, and she and her father may lose their home.

               Then she sees the ghost Phil.

               Dimaline’s book is  a quiet fantasy.  There isn’t a world saving quest.  Winifred thinks her quest as it were is saving her home.  The real quest, the real point of the book Is coming to terms with loss of all types and grief.

               Winifred feels as if she doesn’t belong most places.  She is weird.  Her mind works differently – focusing on symmetry.  She is Metis on her mother’s said, but she really doesn’t know her mother’s people, outside of a nasty cousin and an aunt who is dead at the start of the novel.  Neither she nor her father seems to have gotten over the lost of her mother.  Additionally, Winifred is facing the loss of her best friend because of a little thing called growing up.    In some ways, when she finally meets Phil she gets a friend, lover, and parental figure all rolled up in one.

               How Winifred, her father, and Phil come to terms with loss is different but works for each them.  Phil, in particular, is interesting because she brings to mind all the missing and found dead First Nations teens that seem to be forgotten or used for points.  It’s also like how the lost of Winfred’s mother makes it that much more difficult for her to get in touch with part of her heritage.

               It’s a quite book, more about the struggles of growing up and losing.  One of the misses with the book is the character of Penny.  While not making Penny and Winifred become best buds is an excellent choice, Penny is used as a one note character without anything much to her.  There are hints, but they are never fully explored, and some of what happens in terms of information about Penny feels a bit flat. 

               That said the book is profoundly moving in a quiet way.   The idea of loss and moving forward  - and the range of losses mother, life, home, heritage, childhood, friends -  is important.  The book covers all this and does so without coddling the reader.  It shows a very human experience.

 

(Quick spoiler word – there is a pet death in the course of the novel.  The pet in question dies of old age and peacefully. I would also argue that the pet in question was really background dressing).