A Boy is Not a Ghost

A Boy is Not a Ghost begins with a deft recap of the previous book, A Boy is Not a Bird, the first of a trilogy. This second book of the series covers much more ground than the first, following 12-year-old Natt Silver across the Soviet Union in a filthy livestock train to his new home in Siberia. He and his mother have been deported from their Eastern European home in what, at the time, was Romania but is present-day Ukraine. In 1941, they are part of a quota of villagers exiled for no particular reason after their territory is co-opted by the Soviet Union. Natt suffers many more trials on the journey, including lice infestations, the indignity of the communal toilet and the death of many of his companions. He is also separated from some of the friends and neighbours who were supporting him and keeping his spirits up.

After quite a long lead-up, Natt arrives in Siberia, and the narrative settles into its central subject matter: how life can break you down into a ghost or a nobody, what you can do to survive, and how to become a person again. Natt has almost everything taken from him. Dumped in Siberia, starving, with barely a place to sleep, Natt then finds himself completely alone when his mother is sent to prison for a year after a guard tricks her into taking some extra potatoes. His older friend and teacher, Irena, looks out for him, and they actually find a better place to live and get some food. But when she is able to leave to look for her parents, Natt is alone without the surrogate family which was keeping him sane. Another family takes him in, and, though the father dislikes him, the mother and daughter befriend him and keep him going, even when he has a fever for three weeks and almost dies since he has lost the will to live.

Plans begin to hatch as Natt’s mother finds a protector in a Russian doctor who sends out coded messages. Natt understands that he must adopt a new identity and make his way to the city of Tomsk, hundreds of miles away. This will be his chance to be active, rather than passive, and regain his personhood. This daring journey turns into another debacle during which he is swindled and nearly dies, ending up in a children’s hospital ward. He recovers, and his mother is released from prison, but now they must obtain travel permits and make their way even further away, to Moscow, to find his father. Along the way, Natt falls in love! The next stage, to come in the third book, will be the attempt to escape to Canada.

Well over a year passes during the course of the book, during which time Natt weathers many storms. Because his story is full of almost unimaginable challenges and suffering, it makes sense to skip forward in time on several occasions. Ravel manages an excellent balance between advancing the plot, exploring Natt’s emotions, and acknowledging the physical and psychological travails he faces. Because his fate is so random and unfair, it would be easy to wallow in sorrow and bitterness, but Natt is able to remain upbeat at times. Other times, he acknowledges unbearable itching from lice and bedbugs, the bitter cold of the Siberian winter and the pain of near starvation. He reflects philosophically on all that he has lost while still trying to remain positive about his future. The story remains firmly focused on Natt’s present though and his struggle to get through each day. Occasionally, he reflects about big picture themes, like the unfairness of Stalin’s quotas and the war in Europe.

Natt tells this story, and his tone remains conversational throughout. He is able to find humour and love within circumstances of fear and scarcity. He is a good narrator who carries the reader along with him through good and bad. By the end of the book, he is unrecognizable as the timid boy readers first met in A Boy is Not a Bird. Natt is now a young teenager, but he is already the adult in his family, with vast survival skills. He has learned to be clever, quiet and cunning. He has developed ingenuity because it is the only thing which allowed him to survive. This transformation is extremely believable and happens gradually, as in real life.

This trilogy is explicit in its desire to keep history alive and to encourage generosity and tolerance via stories of children, like Natt, who suffer through no fault of their own. So many children throughout history have suffered due to wars and geopolitical events which they barely understand, and A Boy is Not a Ghost clearly illustrates what it is like to be a kid caught up in historical tumult. Ravel is determined that each story is important to tell and that each child matters. She adds many more layers of detail to this story of forced migration during World War II and Stalin’s Soviet Union, the latter a topic few readers will know anything about. She brings Siberia to life, showing what people did to survive and conjuring up the vast empty coldness of the place. Particularly memorable are Natt’s descriptions of the cacophony of ice on the river as it cracks and melts. Natt’s story, which fictionalizes the biography of Ravel’s fifth-grade teacher, is an inspiring tale of survival which successfully brings an important forgotten piece of history to life.